Trip to Ransaran Creek Part II.

Having been to Ransaran two weeks before midsummer and having seen huge Arctic char swimming within reach of my rod tip I had a hard time forgetting about the place and finally four weeks later I called my long time fishing buddy Fred and told him about the place.

- You’re lying! Was his immediate response. There can’t be such fishing there and I haven’t heard about it….?

- Well then, come with me and see for yourself I told him.

And so it went that we booked permits for 24 hours of fishing at Ransaran Creek.

Tagging along was another friend of mine, Erik Holmlund fly-fisherman and owner of one of the oldest fishing sites on the Swedish part of the web, Erik’s River site.

We planned on arriving so that our fishing would start at 1 pm and end 1 pm next day.
Arriving at Saxnasgarden mountain resort I once again found myself sitting in a restaurant where one could pay a fee just to admire the view. After lunch and another visit to the fishing center to pick up our permits we were on our way up to the creek.

My first visit to Ransaran had been a success although the weather had been on the windy and slightly chilly side. This time the weather was warm and the wind just about still. But what was to come NOTHING could have prepared me for.
Once at the creek we set up camp and took a walk up to a canyon leading out from a water reservoir, not a water power plant, just a reservoir. This reservoir having a bottom outlet affects the quota restricted part of the creek in two ways. First, the water is always very cold, around 6 degrees Celsius even during July. Second, the bottom outlet provides an abundance of gammarus in the stretch below. Arctic char normally feeding on gammarus and liking cold water reach enormous size in this creek and specimen up to 5.5 kg (lb12) have been caught.

On our walk up to the canyon, where fishing is prohibited, we saw fish swimming in the narrow creek that easily surpassed 4,5 kg (lb10). Asking my friend if he still thought I was lying he was to distressed by what he saw that I got no answer.
Fishing started out with us casting with very small gnats or weighted nymphs tied on to what was the smallest diameter tippets we dared to use. Fish were rising everywhere and it was big fish, even huge fish, but we caught nothing. It was still daytime, in the afternoon, when we decided to take a break and have something to eat. The shear frustration of having such rises and being unable to fool the fish was taking its toll.
At this point something happened that I never ever had expected, the char was starting to do head and tail rises all over. It was a sight that will be forever imprinted in my brain. The number of fish rising per minute was around a hundred and the size was such that the tailfins easily were wider than 10 cm (4 inches). Guess if we hurried to the rods!? But no avail. The fish would simply not touch anything thrown at them.

Late that night I caught what was going to be my first Arctic char that trip (18 inches and lb 2,5) on a fly that I had no more than four of. And my friends had none. It was an iron blue version of the Klinkhamer in size 14.

The only way to get a rise was to wait for a fish to show itself and then present this Klinkhamer so that it floated fly first, leader coming behind it, to the fish. I had to give my friends one fly each explaining that I had only four and that the last one also was mine. We must have seen thousands of rises that night and later I heard that one of the fishing guides had expressed that he was close to tears from the sight. It was a humbling experience to see all that fish rising under the midnight sun in a mountain valley where the snow still was evident on the slopes.
Waking up the morning after, a bit tired but very keen on getting a few more hours of fishing in before our permit ended, we cooked breakfast. While sitting and eating a big Arctic char started to rise no more than 50 feet from our tent. Fred being frustrated from not catching anything the night before simply dropped his sandwich and grabbed his rod with the small Klinkhamer still on it. It was kind of fun looking at him approaching the riverbank on all four, expecting the char to stop rising in any second. Stripping line onto the ground he made one false cast and dropped the fly above the fish in the stream. Slowly floating towards the point where the fish had been rising the fish rose again. I literally yelled at him,

- Why didn’t you strike you moron.

He shouted back that the fish had been rising to something no more than 25 inches to the side of his fly. At the very second he closed his mouth the fish took the Klinkhamer and he hooked it. Getting up to a standing position he shouted,

- Oh oh! It’s a big one.
And it really was. He never took it out of the water, just unhooked it since we were going home later that evening but I took some really nice pictures of it while it was still on and I swear it must’ve been close to 20 inches.

Getting back to his breakfast on shaky legs, but with a smile on his lips nothing could’ve erased at that point, he sat down mumbling something about how good living can be.
Now comes the fun part. We hadn’t been sitting there for more than two minutes when another big Arctic char rose in the exact same spot. We both looked at Erik who already was on his feet. Erik who hasn’t been fishing the fly for as long as Fred more or less imitated Fred in his approach and did everything perfect. The fact that the fish broke him left him more or less devastated but even more so determined to learn more about fly-fishing and to return next year.

I was to have more success than my fellow fishermen and caught another four char at approx the same size or slightly smaller than my first. This is not what I remember best from the trip though. I was fishing the lower calm water at the inlet from the creek when I saw one of those trophy fish that we knew could be found in these waters. It was rising again and again in a side current created by the inlet and did not really pose any difficulty as to how to fool him and hence I cast and landed the K. fly two meters above him in the current with the leader coming behind. I hooked that fish and after 30 seconds I hadn’t even slowed him down when he broke me. I don’t cry easily, but friends, this time it was very close.
Packing up and returning home was bittersweet. We had had an experience that made us want to stay longer but also a fishing trip worth telling about.

Next year…..next year…..

/Roger