River Em fall fishing – big salmon in tricky conditions

We came to Em, Håkan and myself, late at night. We came to a very low river with only 6 m3/s and reports on few sea trout running and very tricky fishing. First day I actually hooked four fish. I landed two big fall salmon of 105 and 110 cm, the biggest a strong female that put up a good fight in Home Pool. I lost one, possibly another salmon and also lost a nice 4-5 kilo trout. Overall a good, quite normal day of Em fall fishing. A small TTT Pahtakorva on a slow hoover tip and some retrieving produced the takes.

Second day was tricky for me I hooked a nice 7-8 kilo sea trout in my favorite pool – Barrett. It rolled away in the surface and came off. Håkan had some takes but didn’t land any until the last hour. 

Last day I started in Old Man’s Place where I had seen a nice trout the day before. I fished it carefully on a very short line and it took the fly – maybe only 5 m from me. Three seconds and lost – shit! It’s rewarding to know where they are, get a good plan and make them take. To lose that was hard – I really wanted that fish. I fished Sea Pool were a good number of fish was cruising but too far out to be fishable.

Again, in Barrett on just a few meter of line a good fish came up and took the fly in a big swirl. After some 15 minutes and a tough and odd fight with some help from Andreas Möller we landed a 119 cm big and powerful male salmon. Dark and magnificent in its spawning colors it was truly 20 kilo +. We all love them when they are fresh in silver, but I think the fall fish are beautiful. When they go this big, they are despite the lack of silver memorable to catch. Pahtakorva TTT did it again! These new flies just keep on catching big fish, TTT has now caught dozens of truly big fish. So many 30+, several 40+ and even a couple 50 lbs salmon. This in merely three years time – remarkable!

To sum up I hooked seven fish which in the tricky conditions was quite OK. I lost the two sea trout, which really is what we come for, which was shit. There were four sea trout landed these days – one taken by Håkan second day in the dark of the Home Pool tail, Håkan also landed a 116 cm female salmon the last morning. Em is special even on low water. The good crowd of serious anglers made it a good ending of my Scandinavian season. Now only Tweed left before the 2019 season is over.