Eystri-Rangá — the East Ranga — winds across the broad alluvial plain of southern Iceland an hour east of Reykjavík, under the gaze of Hekla and the Eyjafjallajökull ice. It is mainly a spring-fed river, its flow tempered by a little glacial melt that keeps the water cooler than many Icelandic rivers, running some twenty-two kilometres of intensely productive salmon water within a system of around seventy. Decades of careful smolt-rearing and stocking have lifted it from a minor river to, in many recent years, the single most productive salmon river in the country. The character is lowland and gentle — meandering runs, glides and modest pools over an alluvial bed of volcanic sand and gravel, fished across nine beats. The water is generally clear and even-flowing. Wading is easy and the gradient soft; this is a river read by its lies rather than fought through heavy water.

Wading: Soft alluvial margins