Gierts creek TR

A week after midsummer’s eve I was asked by a friend of mine if I felt like visiting a lake, with a small stream outlet, said to hold trophy grayling. When I asked him what his perception of trophy grayling was he told me that he himself had caught a 25+ inch grayling in the small stream. I don’t know about you guys, but for me a grayling longer than two feet is one big grayling. Later, during the Swedish Lapland clave, I took all the clavers to this lake with the hope that they would get into some huge grayling, and of course we didn’t get to see any fish at all.
Anyway, after driving from the coast to the small community of Sorsele we met with a guy named Magnus Bidner who is involved in a project called Lapland fishing. This guy has knowledge about the waters around Sorsele that only a local can acquire. Driving along a small forest road we managed to see two capercaillie before arriving at the spot where we were about to leave the car. Stepping out of the car my friend Andreas points at some tracks on the gravel road. Bear tracks, and fresh such. Knowing that a bear had visited the exact same spot within a few hours earlier and knowing that we were to walk a kilometer through the forest that probably was its habitat was, to say the least, interesting.
On arrival to the lake, a small forest lake with an even tinier stream as outlet, we saw some fish rising. Inflating my float tube I got into the water with my 10 “#5 Sage with an Elk hair caddis tied to the tippet.

Andreas and Magnus

Andreas in the float tube.

Concentration

As I was talking to my friends at the shore I missed the first take and being late struck all too hard in a misplaced attempt to compensate for my thoughts being on other matters than fishing. The line broke, and my friendly spectators made some not so friendly comments about striking to hard. Being a source lake with water coming out of the ground the temperature wasn’t all that welcoming to the use of a float tube and I had to give up before I was deep frozen. But giving up came second to the fact that I caught a grayling at about lb2. After a couple more hours of fishing we decided to try another water.

Gierts creek is a well known creek in the Swedish fly fishing society. This is a creek that starts high up on a mountain plateau and holds both trout and grayling. Magnus showed us a calmer stretch where fish where rising all over.

Upstream.

Downstream.

Grayling is an easy fish to estimate the size by its rise, at least compared to Arctic char that is among the most difficult. With an abundance of rising grayling we caught several at lb2 and I must say it was one of the nicer grayling trips that I’ve had. I only saw one larger trout and although I tried very hard to match the hatch and present the fly in as good a way as I could, it simply stopped rising at my first attempt. The long story is that I had to wade in the middle of the stream for about one hundred meters before I even got to a position where I could cast. This in turn made me extra careful in my presentation of the fly and I swear it was free floating with the fly coming first to the fish. My guess is that there was something about the fly that wasn't satisfactory. That’s life I suppose.

/Roger