An American, a Honduran/Swede, and an Icelander mount up on a road-weary Land Cruiser with eight fly rods on the hood then turn down a dirt trek into the heart of Iceland’s Highlands, the wind be damned. It sounds like the beginning of a good joke, but for fishing guides working the central highlands of the Land of Fire and Ice, it’s just another day at work.
It’s another day at work for me, too, only here I’m not a fishing guide. I’m toting a couple cameras along with a five-weight, my usual load-out for a job like this one. It’s midsummer in Iceland, and I’ve been on the road in various countries since January, gone more than I’m home. It’s a trend that will continue through November; high-pressure photo shoots in some logistically-complex locales. It makes me doubly glad to be back in Iceland with friends; this is a work trip, too, but with people I know and trust, and that makes all the difference in the world.
My comrades for the day are charismatic, energetic Sindri, the co-owner at Icelandic fly-fishing outfitter Fish Partner, who already has his favorite fly rods loaded onto the truck. Jerome, the head guide at our home base of Fish Partner’s remote Highlands Lodge, packs along his own quiver of rods and—perhaps most important of all—our lunches.
The three of us have fished together before, and we know each other well enough to understand the lunches might not get eaten until the ride home. But it’s good to know the food’s there, you know, just in case the fishing is slow.
True to form in Iceland, however, it’s not slow. We hike down into canyons; steep, big rocky corridors cut into the barren volcanic earth. Slices that are tiered with broad, cascading waterfalls such as the Fagrifoss, that ebb and flow into languid pools through the canyon. Sindri and I nestle into moss softer than many mattresses I’ve slept on over the years, hunker out of the chilly breeze, and watch Jerome as he works his way down to a pool below a big waterfall. Even on our little overlook the mist kicked up from the massive waterfall clouds my camera lens; down by the pool where Jerome’s casting into the foam line, it's a downright rain shower.
He's done this before though… he wore his wading jacket as armor against the spray.
Jerome’s a fishy gent, and to absolutely no one’s surprise he hooks into an Ice-Age Icelandic brown trout within the first few minutes. That fish sets the pace for the day; we hike the canyons, explore, and trade stories. More often than not one of us is fishing and the other two are nestled into the rocks, helping spot fish and just relaxing. We drink water from springs, colder and fresher than any fancy supermarket find, chase big browns in crystal-clear water, and catch up on the industry fishing gossip from our respective corners of the globe.
All three of us make a living working with clients at fishing lodges. It’s rare for us to get time to just go fishing with friends; to have a relaxed day where we can chitchat and bullshit and do all the things people actually do when they go fishing for fun. And so we hike, and cast, and meet more brown trout as the day floats on. By the time we climb out of the canyon to the trusty Land Cruiser waiting in the cool wind, it’s nearly time to head back to home base for the evening. We pull out our lunch, only to crack the Tupperware then decide that if we eat and drive, we can hit one more stretch of river on the way home. The layered shepherd’s pie-type creation is consumed as we bump down the road, and we make one more pit stop to wade for Arctic char before turning homeward.
Over nearly twenty years of traveling around the world, photographing and writing about fishermen in some mighty strange places, I’ve learned there are some things that unite us. We’ll always forgo food if there’s promising fishing at hand. We’ll forever stop the vehicle to get out and look over a stretch of water to see if it holds fish worth casting to. And we’ll always—always—try to fit in that final cast before packing up and heading home.
