What's What with Greenland?

What’s what with Greenland?

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR.GETAWAY

Danish angler, Thomas Søbirk was among the pioneers when it came to developing fishing tourism in Greenland. He has fished in Greenland numerous times, and we’ve had the chance to sit down with him and pick his brains about the fishing there, what drew his attention to Greenland in the first place, and how his company – Getaway Tours – got into the Greenland fishing scene.

By Editorial Staff // Images by Getaway Tours

Getaway Fly Fishing or Flyfish Greenland. Who are we talking to?

- Both! Sorry about the confusion, you’re not the first to ask. My company is Getaway Fly Fishing. Our history of offering international fishing trips started back in 2001. FlyfishGreenland.com is our website dedicated to – well, fly fishing in Greenland, obviously.

Right. There’s a lot of buzz around fly fishing in Greenland. How did it all start?

- During the seventies, when quite a few Danes took on personal adventures by taking jobs in Greenland, they soon discovered that many of the rivers were full of Arctic char and started to fish for them. It wasn’t that the Greenlanders didn’t know, of course – they just weren’t interested in fishing for fun.

Anyway, the word got out and others – mainly Scandinavians, started traveling to Greenland to fish. Not in great numbers – travel was complicated and expensive in those days, but enough to see articles on Greenland’s Arctic char fishing appearing in magazines now and then.

During the nineties, a few fishing camps shot up, but the fishing never really caught on.

Why? The fishing looks great!

- Well, it is. But back then, I think a lot of people went to Greenland with spinning rods and ended up fishing glacier fed rivers with lots of silt and zero visibility. Other times, they were taken to rivers with clear water and lots of char, but those rivers were often short – at least the fishable parts – and had all the fish piling up in a few pools in front of a waterfall they couldn’t pass. Often, these rivers would also be close to cities, meaning they were fished hard by local netters and the average size of the char was rather small.

In short, as the world started opening up for travel, spin fishermen slowly lost interest in Greenland and went for bigger fish elsewhere - and fly fishers couldn’t be bothered to “fish the same pool for char, all of the same small size, for a week”. At the time, I guess the reputation of the rivers in Greenland wasn’t that great.

It’s clearly a different situation today. So, what happened?

- In 2004, I was running fishing magazines in Denmark and Sweden. However, what had started as reader’s trips had slowly grown into a small fishing travel agency. For years, we had been talking about Greenland – we knew there was good fly fishing to be found somewhere up there, but we really didn’t know where to look.

One day, a Danish teacher working in Greenland sent us an article about his recent fishing trip to a river south of Sisimiut. That’s the scarcely populated country’s second largest city with 5,600 inhabitants, on the east coast of southern Greenland. Anyway, the images didn’t meet the standards expected for a magazine article but the char were quite big, and what he told us about the fishing really caught our attention: The river was lake fed, clear, and with more than ten kilometres of fishable water. According to him, it was perfect fly water!

The Greenland summer is short, and if I remember correctly, we were already well into August. Within a week, we had planned for a scouting expedition, and a few weeks later we knew we had found what we were looking for! We had formed a partnership with a local partner (still running to this day) and were getting ready to launch for the 2005-season.

You now have several well-known camps, and even a full-service lodge on one of them. You started all that right away?

- No, no – not at all! It was a long way coming! To begin with, we only marketed Greenland to Scandinavian guests and we were really afraid of scaring them away by being too expensive. Due to the remoteness of the world’s biggest island, operation costs in Greenland are high, the same goes for flights, so we tried to save on everything else. We would put two guests (that didn’t necessarily know each other) in a small tent together, we would go shopping provisions with the guests and split the bill and guests would have to help prepare meals and clean dishes.

The second season, we felt an upgrade to individual tents was needed but other than that, I think it pretty much ran like that for the first several seasons. And, with the clientele we had at the time, it was an instant success.

Arctic char are incredibly strong and powerful fighters, and they often jump clear out of the water during the fight.

Why the success, if others had failed?

- Probably a combination of pure luck and some ability to see potential. Most importantly, we had been introduced to two great rivers: Erfalik and Napiarissat. Clear water - and lots of it, and good-sized fish. Just great fishing all together, which is always the foundation for success, though it won’t always be enough. While we didn’t discover these rivers, we were the first to see the big potential they held. When we arrived in Greenland, another Danish agency had prebooked the entire season that year but they hadn’t booked one single guest. Instead, they focused on filling groups on a river close to the main airport of Kangerlussuaq, a location offering easier logistics and much lower running costs but also a much poorer fishing experience (I don’t even think anyone fishes there today).

- Their ignorance made it possible to partner up with Sirius, a local powerhouse of a partner offering the needed logistics on transportation, accommodation, and a strong understanding of how to operate successfully in Greenland. Finally, I’d like to think we did some decent marketing. A big part of which was fishing the right fly.

The right fly?!

- When we started fishing these rivers, the char could be quite stupid. Especially if you were fishing big, bright streamers. So, to add some extra excitement, we started fishing them on foam flies, skated across the surface. Man, was this addictive?!

The big char would push a wave from several meters away, and the eats were super spectacular. The foam fly fishing really helped spread the word and became synonymous with char fishing in Greenland. It looked super cool on, so we made a DVD and distributed it widely.

Sight-fishing for arctic char in a ginclear feeder-lake provides visually stimulation beyond belief.

So, there could be other outfitters running camps on the same rivers?

- Exactly! The only reason it didn’t happen was because our partner was the only one in the area with boats licensed to transfer tourists. But in the early years, we had problems with illegal boating and would sometimes have others camping and fishing the rivers we had been promoting.

It didn’t happen often, but it happened often enough that it was too risky to make the bigger investments in camps and to market them internationally. The only way to grow this into a sustainable business was to get some sort of exclusive access to the rivers we fished.

So, what did you do?

- I’ll spare you the long version. Here’s the short one: I hooked up with a guy from Greenland Tourism and Business Council, who also believed that concessions on some rivers was the right

way to grow fishing tourism in Greenland. He asked me to write our thoughts on how to implement concessions, which I did in November 2008. From there on, it took eight long years and a couple of changing governments in Greenland before the law on concessions was finally voted through. On January 1st, 2017 it came into effect and I take some pride in recognizing a lot of my initial thoughts in what is now the law.

Camp life under the midnight sun. If you’re not into tenting, Getaway also have a regular lodge.

Nice! And then you got the concessions on your rivers and built the lodge on one of them?

- No, you can’t apply for the concessions unless you live in Greenland. So, our partners in Greenland applied for what we believed was the best three rivers, and with our history of operating camps there together, they got them. With a more secure future, they also decided to build the Erfalik Lodge, replacing our tent camp on the river in 2019. We run the fishing program at the lodge in July and August, and they then use it for heliskiing, corporate events and wilderness tourism during spring and autumn.

For 2020, we had plans for a serious upgrade on the tent camps but Covid got in the way. Instead, we did it in 2022: bigger tents, wooden platforms, and a camp shower.

There is very little infrastructure in Greenland, and getting to and from the rivers require boat transfers.

“The three best rivers”? But you only started out with two, right?

- Yes, we started out with Erfalik and Napiarissat, both south of Sisimiut. And then, when the talks of concessions started, we got busy scouting for a couple of seasons, to make sure we didn’t miss out on anything.

By then, we already knew of one river north of Sisimiut with a reputation for really big fish but it was closed to fishing, allegedly because it had been fished too hard with nets. So, we scouted a number of other rivers but didn’t find any nearly as good as what we already had.

Then, the river up north opened for fishing, and we scouted it in 2008. To this day, I still wonder why it was closed for fishing but I have a theory ...

Which is?

- The first time we fished this river, three of us were camping at the mouth and fished the lower parts of the river during the first evening and the following morning. And we caught one char in some eight hours of fishing. The river was just empty of fish!

It wasn’t until early afternoon on the second day - after having fished our way some three kilometres upriver – that we caught a few more fish. And as we moved further upstream, we started seeing lots of really big fish in the pools. They weren’t easy but we eventually found a fly that worked and soon had crazy good fishing. Later, they also started going for foam flies. It was epic!

Sorry, I digress … My theory is that some biologists had been checking out the lower parts of the river in season, had found it completely empty of fish, and decided to close it for five years to give the chars a chance to bounce back. We now know that the char on this river run straight through the lower parts without resting.

I know it sounds a bit far-fetched but then again, what else could it be? The char is a super-slow growing species and if the river had really been fished out, there is just no way that we could come in after a five-year-ban and find a huge run of really big fish up to 6-7 kilos in the river! Even char of half that size – of which there were a lot – would be at least ten years old, probably more. And during our first full season, our guests landed char up to 8,3 kilos. I don’t know of any other river in Greenland with fish of that size. Anyway, that’s the story of the third camp, now known as Camp North.

And instead of using the name of the river, you called it Camp North so others wouldn’t discover it?

- That was probably part of the reason, but another reason was that the name of the river is Eqalugsugssuit. That’s a bit too tongue-twisting for most of us. So even now, with a concession on the river, we stick to Camp North.

Greenland is huge – there must be hundreds of rivers with Arctic char? The potential for fishing tourism must be enormous?

- I don’t know how many rivers in Greenland that hold a population of sea run Arctic char. I doubt anyone knows, but I guess it could be well into the hundreds. However, you have to take into consideration that the vast majority of them fall under at least one, and most often both, of these categories:

They are either too short, or too small to offer interesting fishing and/or they are too far away from Greenland’s very limited infrastructure to be within reach for a fishing trip on a reasonable budget. While there is definitely potential to grow fishing tourism in Greenland, I wouldn’t call it enormous.

What’s the flyfishing scene in Greenland like?

- It’s somewhere between super small and non-existent!

It’s a short season of around two months, and there is no local interest in fly fishing, so don’t expect to find any guides, fly shops, or as much as a spool of tippet anywhere in Greenland.

While we are still the leading operator of flyfishing camps in Greenland, our success has obviously inspired others to follow. Apart from the three rivers we run, a dozen of other rivers in Greenland have now been appointed as concession rivers. I think around half of them now have someone running a fishing program on them.

What about DIY (Do It Yourself) fishing in Greenland?

- With a national fishing license, you can fish any river in Greenland that’s not under concession. Some tourists take advantage of this while on a hiking trip, others as part of day-long group excursions. I think the fishing you can find this way appeals more to the occasional or opportunistic angler.

Theoretically, you could also find your own secret river, far away from civilization with good fishing and no one else around. But getting there would be costly, unless you are a bigger group to share the costs of a boat transfer.

What differentiates the three camps you operate?

- All three rivers are lake fed, always running clear, and with plenty of water to keep you busy for a week.

Erfalik has very varied fishing, from wider slow running parts to really fast water with small pockets and everything in between. Sometimes, we also find great fishing in the lakes there. And then there is obviously the comforts of staying in a lodge that sets it apart from everything else.

Our two tent camps offer similar facilities. Camp North holds the biggest char and offer great variation. However, it is a little more demanding because you need to hike longer distances. Napiarissat is a great river with easy hiking but it is a little shorter than the other two so we have decided to do slightly smaller groups there, and mostly use it for groups of friends booking together.

You mentioned earlier that the fish were “stupid” when you arrived. Has the fishing changed since you started fishing these rivers?

- Yes, I think it has. Even if the runs of char on each of these three rivers are counted in the thousands, I would say they have wised up. We still fish foam flies a great deal, and when the fishing is on it’s hard to beat. But when they don’t produce, we fish streamers, nymphs and occasionally dry flies in many different ways.

The streamers are now smaller and lighter dressed than in the early days, and in general the fishing has gotten a little bit more technical – which many of us find a lot more interesting and challenging. We still catch plenty of fish but you reap greater rewards if you think about what you are doing and fish your flies well.

What other fish swims are in these rivers?

- Sticklebacks, and nothing else!

Really? No salmon?

- Really. Even if there are a lot of Atlantic salmon in the ocean around Greenland, they are mainly European and North American fish that have migrated there to feed. They don’t run the rivers in Greenland.

Actually, there is one river (Kapisillit River, ed.) in the southwest of Greenland that has a small population of Atlantic salmon. But they are genetically different compared to the other salmon stocks found in the North Atlantic. The run is estimated to be a mere 300 fish and Greenland’s salmon are now red-listed.

How do you see the future of fly fishing in Greenland?

- Overall, quite bright. In popularity, I think we have only seen the beginning. Fortunately, we got concessions relatively early in the process, which should, somewhat, protect the fishing on the most attractive rivers from being over exploited. But I also think it is now time to take the next steps in protecting this unique resource for future generations.

The most obvious step is to limit the netting of char in the ocean. They have very little commercial value so they are worth so much more in a river than in a net.

While we have our own rules - such as only allowing barbless single hooks, practising catch & release, and closing the camps on Sept. 1st to give the fish some peace around spawning time, there are still no official laws protecting the fishery. There is no minimum size, no catch limit, and no closed season.

Personally, I would like to see not only a minimum size but also a maximum size implemented, a strict limit on what can be harvested, and a closed season allowing the fish to spawn without any disturbances.