Relentless Fog and Big Pollock On Flies in Sätervik

It was one of those days with a thick fog belt that seemed to engulf everything around Sätervik, a small sleepy fishing town in Northern Norway. Everyone on this trip and in our small group of fly fisherman was getting sick of hunting for fish out in the fog without any VHF and Radar since we almost got rammed buy a commercial fishing boat the previous night. So we decided to go the 12 nautical miles into port and have some drinks. When we almost had reached our camp I told Gustav that we should try the pinnacles just outside the camp in a last attempt for the day. He looked at me with a stare that could have killed a man, but soon gave in because of my continuous nagging. I rigged the 8 weight fly rod with a small green and white baitfish fly pattern and we started to fish the bouy that was closest to the camp.

On the third cast I hooked into something big that out spooled me in less than 20 seconds. Now, everyone was back in the game for real and everybody was forgetting about the fog and freezing weather. We made a second round around the buoy and immediately Gustav hooked up to a big fish that wrapped his line around the buoy and got of.
In the next cast I hooked into a solid fish that pealed of line but
only in short outburst and made the hole rod shiver with its hard tail sweeps. It almost felt like a small bonito and when the fish came up to boat and I saw the blue green metallic back with black stripes I understood what it was, the first big mackerel on the fly rod in Norway.

Now we have drifted to far from the buoy and the echo sounder said that that the depth was 200meter so we went back to the buoy for more action. We made the next pass a bit further from the buoy around the 20 meter mark. On the last cast of the drift I felt a small bump on my fly and stripped striked into something solid. The next run made blisters on my hand when I had to hand brake the reel that had lost its drag system completely fighting that previous monster Pollock.
I managed to stop the fish after a run that took me deep into the backing. After that the fished tangled itself in the damn Kelp!!!
We drove up to where the fish was tangled and after a little while the fish got loose from the kelp and the fight was on once more. After a long and brutal fight with loads of power dives, the fish was by the boat and I could lift up a big green backed Pollock. After this we went home to celebrate and the night ended out at the pier looking at a hunting sea utter in the harbour basin while eating fresh mackerel on a piece of hard bread.
A very bad trip had quickly been transformed into a great one!

P-A Nilsson "Trouthunter for life"