There’s nothing sexy about the guiding fatigue that shows up as a lacklustre strip set on a big brown. The kind where you really should have been sleeping, but something in your body told you now is the time to go fishing.
This wouldn’t be a problem swinging flies for salmon. In fact, fatigue for salmon could actually help people not strike on a fish that rewards a patient lift rather than a hard strike. This is not the case while tossing streamers for browns though. Especially not when the soft glass rod doesn’t make up for the lack of enthusiasm in the set. Two wet noodles - one an arm, the other a rod.
I’ve been guiding for many long days on the water, and I’m slowly realizing I am getting older. Getting older apparently means that things like my back, my knees, and muscles are going to ache more. And I need to build in some time for physical rest.
I’m not very good at that.
It got me thinking of the years gone by. I’ve been guiding at this river since I was just a boy. The first time I drove with a drivers licence was with a car full of drunk Norwegian clients - going around the roundabout in my boss’s giant lifted Land Cruiser was like a roller coaster.
Scary for everyone involved.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes the river and I have been through in our time together. In some ways it’s one of the longest relationships I’ve had in my life. I bought my first “proper” fishing licence in this river when I was just 11 or 12. Me and my best friend saved up all summer to be able to buy a day ticket on a stretch of the river which is now the “trout beat” - a long and dreamy section of river from the headwaters down to a waterfall which marks the upper reaches of the salmon section. We spent most of the day lost, trying to find where to access the river and had no idea what we were doing. But what I remember the most was running into these old timers fishing a corner pool downriver from us, who showed me a trunk filled with 5-6 brown trout, all big fish from 5-10lbs.
That image is permanently seared into my brain. Awe inspiring, and bittersweet in hindsight, knowing how old those brown trout must have been.
In some ways that one trip shaped my life in ways I could never have anticipated. Years later I found that exact spot again. I brought my best friend there, now as young adults. We caught some big browns there together, which we released - in what felt like a full circle moment from that scene as kids. When I first started working and guiding this river, the effects of years of killing these big browns was evident. They were much fewer, and it took many many years of continued catch and release policies to bring the population back to what it is today - a healthy and vibrant trout population with fish of multiple year classes around.
After that first trip I think I always knew deep down that I wanted to know more about those trout. When I started working at the river, getting my foot in the door as a dishwasher and server first, then as a guide, it was the trout of it all that captivated me, not the salmon that everyone was flying from all over the world to see. I used to ride my bike up to the river above the salmon section after working at the lodge, fishing for trout during the bright nights of Icelandic mid-summer. I’d go days and weeks without catching much of anything, but every now and then I’d have a special interaction from the river ghosts. Ghosts might not be the right word for the trout that swim there.. they’re more like the leopards of a treeless volcanic frosty jungle.
I’ve put some blood, sweat and tears into that river. A couple years into guiding there I broke some ribs walking out of my cabin going to guide one morning. Slipping on some frost on the stairs, I laid on the ground terrified that I’d broken my back as I was catching my breath. I attempted to guide again that afternoon, as I hadn’t gone to the doctor yet. But falling into the river while trying to net a fish was a clear indication something was wrong. I drove myself to a hospital in a nearby town where an annoyed Eastern European nurse poked at my ribcage near my spine:
“Broken. And this one broken too. What did you want me to do? I can’t do anything about it.”
“I just wanted to make sure my spine was okay and that I wasn’t dying..”
“No. The pharmacy is closed so take some ibuprofen.”
Embarrassed, I drove my ass back to the lodge with some broken ribs. But I was young and full of the healing powers of youth. These days when I’ve broken ribs, I’m out of commission for a while. I’m still dumb enough to think I’m not, but I get punished by my body a lot faster, which feels cruel considering my body is slower at recovering.
In some ways, it’s a miracle I haven’t drowned in her current yet. When I was a more reckless young man, I’d wade across her in places I look at today with wiser eyes and see a death trap. I have fallen in multiple times, waders filling with water, going under and getting lucky to have shallows below me. She’s not the kind of river you want to fall into with the safety of others around you, and especially not when you’re alone in the remote upper sections with no one around for miles. She’s cold, and you lose power fast in the cold waters. She’s also got a deceptive current, which looks calm on the surface, but the steady push of fast water takes people by surprise once they’re in it. These are the things I think of now, as a wiser man. I did not give it too much thought when I was younger however, but it did lead me to find some crossings I would never attempt today.
The bottom of the river is mostly volcanic sand, which, much like the sands of time, means that the river is ever changing. Each year the pools are different, the flow is different, and the trout feed in slightly different spots. Like a person, there’s enough there to be distinctly itself, but just different enough each year to learn new things. In some ways we’re growing older together, although she’s on a different timescale than my meager lifetime.
I’ve done a lot of growing up on her banks, I’ve been a great guide, a bad guide, a stupid boy and then a less stupid man. And when I’ve been moody, she’s often moody to mirror me. Occasionally she’ll reward me with a good day. But because she never gives up her trout easy, she’s always kept me obsessed.
Lately, she’s been rewarding me for slowing down, and fishing her at her tempo. In terms of trout, she’s a river that rewards listening, watching, and patience. She’s cold, as cold as they come, originating from multiple springs coming out of the roots of one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes. This cold dictates everything. Fishing her like a warmer stream is doomed to fail - it’s only when you truly listen to her, slowing down to the rhythm of the cold, that you begin to understand how, when, and why her trout feed the way they do. She’s taught me a lot about listening and observing in that way.
I don’t think I’m having a crisis about turning 30… no. Of course not. But I’ve been reflecting on where I’ve been, who I’ve been, and where I want to go. Seeing a river change but somehow stay the same throughout that change has been therapeutic in a way. When we first met I was but a boy. Now I am a man, older, hopefully wiser, but mostly just more easily tired.
Hopefully someday, when I’m even older than this hunk of flesh that is typing this now, I’ll be on her banks, with her having changed, still moody as always, keeping me honest and forcing me to learn new things. There’s that philosophy quote about never stepping into the same river twice, as you have changed and so has the river. And sure, that’s probably true to a logical mind. But we’re both still the same, just older, different in ways, but still the same soul. She still oozes the same character, and I’m still making some of the same mistakes.
That’s comforting to an ageing mind.
