June

The silvery salmon

June is a particularly eagerly awaited month for wild salmon enthusiasts with fishing rods. In a few rivers, fishing starts as early as May, but June is when it really gets going. Silvery adult wild salmon come home from the sea, and the biggest ones arrive first. Then the fishermen hope for a big catch!

The salmon is on the move now. They have followed their inner compass, smelled the river of their childhood and found their way home. In June, the adult salmon is a silvery bundle of muscle. They come home full and happy and have finished eating for a while. Nevertheless, it sometimes bites the hook. Perhaps it is annoyed by the lure or fly that keeps passing by, or perhaps it reacts on pure reflex when it sees something that looks very similar to food it has just eaten in the sea.

Even though the salmon meat in June is at its reddest and fattest, and even though wild salmon is fantastic food, it is probably first and foremost the experience that brings salmon anglers to the river. Salmon fishing is recreation. Spending a quiet summer night on the riverbank in June, either alone or with good friends, is happiness. Whether you catch fish or not, it's a good experience - as long as you know there are wild salmon in the river.

Salmon on a campfire. Photo: Kjell Sæther

Good salmon fishing in a river with lots of fry. That's how it should be. But it's not like that everywhere. There are fewer and fewer wild salmon, and many watercourses have to be closed. Salmon fishing is carefully regulated and adapted to each individual stock. The goal is that we should only fish for a harvestable surplus. First and foremost, we must ensure that there are enough spawning salmon in the river.

June 9 is marked on the prim rod with a fish (salmon). It marks the start of the real summer, because on this day the salmon came from the sea and went up the rivers. The day is called Kolbjørn with the salmon and is the memorial day of St. Columba.