The Otterhola
Camp Argard Norway
By: Jorgen Stenberg
The Argards river never stays the same. Old pools and hot spots disappear and new ones are created. This might sound a bit strange, but it is reality, due to the great changes in temperature and climate during the winter. There might be months of strong cold and lots of snow, which of cause means low winter water levels in the river. But suddenly the Atlantic low pressures comes sweeping in with warm weather and rain, that create massive snow melt that makes the river a thundering mass of water and ice that digs, scrapes and crushes everything in its way. To see this peaceful and friendly river just in a day turning in to something so brutal and wild is almost scary.
The broken up ice often dams up the river, and the real big damage is when these ice dams breaks and release the power of the trapped water and ice. Boulders, rocks, gravel and sand is washed away together with forest, soil and whatever else use to be there, leaving a river that is quite different from the one you fished last year. But the salmons don't seem to mind, and this is of cause nothing new for them This phenomena have of cause existed since the beginning of time, and the salmons are adapted to it and can cope with it. But for us its surprising and sometimes confusing and almost chocking to find that things are not the same as we left them.
In the winter of 1986-87 there was one of these real vicious floodings that changed a lot in the river. In the upper part the old famous Stenhola Pool was just gone, filled with pebbles and sand. But instead there was a new fairly deep pool created 50 meter up streams, and this place immediately became popular among the salmons and of cause also among the fishermen. There were some names suggested, but basically everyone had their own name on the new pool.
Late season that summer the owner of the river - Joar - decided to have a barbeque by the river on the opposite side of the new pool together with some friends. There were no fishing guests at the time, so he told his friends to bring their fishing gear.
A barbeque in Norways is pork chops, lamb chops, sausages and quite a bit of potent drinking gods. The story doesn't tell if it was Aquavit, brandy or the extremely powerful moonshine that back then was produced on most of the farms and regarded as the only stuff appropriate to drink for real Norwegian men. But anyway there were a few drinks taken that evening.
As it was the month of August and past the time of the midnight sun, and the nights was starting to get dark again. Late evening the party was strengthened by food and drink, enough to have a go on the fishing. The water was low at the time, which might have been an advantage for the group as they made attempts to wade to their chosen spots.
Joar decided to try the new pool from the barbeque side, which meant a ha had to wade quite a bit out among the scull-size slippery stones to be able to cover the top of the pool. During the evening it had became overcast, so the night was dark and he could only see the outlines and contours of the water and the objects on the bank. Also there was the white spray every now and then from a Salmon moving in the surface.
After just a few cast he had a massive strike, and could feel that this was no little grilse that had taken the fly. The fish just took of against the opposite side of the pool, but when Joar judged that it was right against the other bank - it stopped. He tried to make the fish move by adding more pressure, but there was no movement. Joar could still feel that the fish was there, but he could do nothing that would make it leave its hold.
He couldn't see anything except the white fly line and some 10 meters of yellow backing going through the water, and as there were rocks surfacing and threatening to damage the line, he decided to wade over and reel in some of it.
When he got closer to the other bank, he realized that the fish wasn't standing in the deep part of the pool. Instead the line marked that it had chosen the real shallow waters in the stream above the pool. Joar found this very strange, and the whole thing got even more strange when he saw that his white fly line when out of the water and into the thick bushes on the bank.
"-At that point I started to suspect that this Salmon maybe wasn't a Salmon. The Argard Salmon runs the river on really low water, but running through the bush would be a bit extreme also for them. "
"After getting up from the water, I followed the fly line until I reach the leader. But at that point the "Salmon" was beginning to act in a way that made abandon the thought to follow the line any further. The message given was very clear, so I cut the leader. The fly wasn't worth losing one or two fingers, as there was a full-grown otter by the end of the line with a size 6 Thunder & Lightning attached on its back....."
The otter was later seen, with the fly gone. So it didn't seem to have suffered any damage from this experience. But he and Joar had together named this pool. Even if the pool would disappear in future, the place will be forever named - Otterhola. ( The Otter Pool).
Check out (click): Camp Argard
Phone: ++46-730-361-554
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