East Iceland's premier salmon and trout river. Long productive runs, excellent fly water, and consistent fishing. One of Iceland's most important salmon rivers with strong sea-trout runs. Volcanic bedrock underlies this river. Iceland's salmon are managed conservatively under operator and national rules — quotas, size limits and catch-and-release are widely applied; check the river's rules before fishing.
Lagarfljot is that rare thing, at once a lake and a river — a long, narrow glacial ribbon stretching twenty-five kilometres past Egilsstadir in east Iceland, fifty-three square kilometres of water more than a hundred metres deep in places. It carries the glacial outflow of the Jokulsa i Fljotsdal off the Vatnajokull ice, and the rock-flour gives it a distinctive murky blue-green colour and poor visibility. The shores rise into Hallormsstadaskogur, Iceland's largest forest, beneath the red-striped Hengifoss — and, by long tradition, the lake holds the Lagarfljotsormur, the serpent of medieval manuscripts. As fishing water it is a big, deep, glacier-fed system on an almost imperceptible gradient, read by its inflows and margins rather than its bottom. Wading has little part to play here; this is boat-and-bank water, approached with the patience a large, opaque, cold lake-river demands.
Wading: Deep, opaque, cold lake river
Summer-autumn runs, variable seasonal patterns by region
- River
- Volcanic
- Unconfined
- Stillwater
- Large river