Fly Fishing for Salmon on the Tovdalselva

Boen Gård:

Fly Fishing for Salmon on the Tovdalselva

By The Editorial Staff

There are plenty of salmon rivers to fish in Norway, but not all of them provide the kind of fishing that will really get your juices flowing. The days of abundance are in the past. The Tovdalselva, however, is a rising star among Norwegian salmon rivers – and the past few seasons have seen a dramatic surge in salmon returns.

The Tovdalselva is the longest river in southern Norway and it offers varied possibilities for visiting fly fishermen. It is a medium-sized river with an average discharge of around 65m3/s and relatively stable water flows throughout the season; a river that originates in Telemark and meanders downstream through Aust-Agder some 140 kilometres towards the North Sea just north of the coastal city of Kristiansand. The lower 35 kilometres up to Herefossfjorden are home to salmon runs that have really kicked back in recent years due to habitat and conservation measures.

A Place of Historic Gravity

The River Tovdal’s banks have been frequented since the last ice age and stone age remains can still be found along the river to this day. In the 1500s, the river rights were owned by Danish King Christian the Second, who leased the salmon fishing rights to local officials.

During the 1800s the river was widely acknowledged as one of Norway’s very best salmon rivers with a total of 18.000 kilos of salmon landed a year; something that many of the visiting British lords, who came here for recreational fishing purposes, enjoyed immensely. Among them were lord Cunlife, director of the Bank of England, Mr. Keney and the Scottish landowner, Harold C. Wilson who would, usually, bring along his cousin Mr. William Radcliffe. In 1924, Radcliffe and Wilson landed 1352 salmon in less than two months. But, alas, like on so many other rivers in Norway, the good fishing didn’t last…

The Return of the Salmon

With its many waterwalls, long runs and deep pools, Tovdalselva is ideally suited for swinging flies – both with single-handed and double-handed fly rods. But, alas, in 1970 all the salmon were gone.

Acid rain, over-fishing and habitat loss had diminished the local salmon stock to the point of extinction, and it wasn’t until 1997 that initiatives aimed at restoring the salmon population came into play. The PH-balance in the river was stabilized with lime treatment, salmon fry was stocked, and new fish ladders were built at dam sites – and, already in 2003, some 300 kilos of salmon were caught in the river. These days, the number is closer to 2000 kilos in that somewhere between 600 and 800 salmon are caught with an average weight of around 3,5 kilos with a growing percentage of fish ranging from 7 kilos and upwards.

Boen Gård

The perhaps best beat – and certainly the beat most heavily saturated by cultural historicity, is the family-owned Boen Gård beat. The picturesque park-like beat offers 1,2 kilometres of prime double-bank salmon fishing below the immense Boen Foss at the foothills of lush green deciduous forests with sporadic patches of grass fields grazed by sheep and their fuzzy offspring.

Many of the pools and runs have names derived from the British lords that once fished here, among them “WR Line”, “Stolkie”, and “Martin’s Point” and in a way fitting of their historic gravity and provenance, they have been cultivated by river keepers in order to improve access and fishability.

Boen Gård caters to 4 – 8 fly fishermen in a newly refurbished and very modern-looking lodge building that sits right on the riverbank close to the historic Boen Gård estate, which – to this date – functions as a restaurant focusing on outstanding Scandinavian cuisine with sustainable, locally-sourced and home-grown ingredients accompanied by specially selected wines and lovely home-brewed beer. The old estate was built in 1813 and has been fully restored to its original state and, as such, is an interesting site offering a rare glimpse into a past cultural microcosm that was frequented by royals, nobles and high society.

Picky Salmon

Flyfish Europe descended upon Boen Gård in mid-June 2020 – a year that will be remembered, mainly, for its massive floods and all the limitations (and sudden opportunities) that came about due to the onslaught of the corona pandemic.

The river was teeming with fish. They would swirl and explode out of the water with a frequency that was hard to believe – and that was making our hearts race frantically. The fish were packed in all the obvious spots, and – while many of the fish that were thrashing about, were in the vicinity of 3-4 kilos, BIG bruisers would show every now and then in demonstrative displays intended to intimidate and assert power.

With more than a handful of very experienced fly fishermen in our group, we obviously thought it would be a walk in the park to cherry pick some good salmon, but - as salmon fishing often goes, we were about to be taught a lesson. Sure enough, the groups that preceded us had caught their fair share of newly risen salmon, but things were now looking different. The river levels had stabilized, water temperatures were rising, and the sun was beating down on Boen Gård from a clear sky with an intensity more fitting of a high-summer august day. And the salmon…? Well, they were extremely picky.

Dining and Fishing Combined

We had booked two nights at Boen Gård’s restaurant and were blown away by the level of service and the quality of the intricately designed seven-course dinners. (Some of us still get all dreamyeyed at the thought of the honey-glazed turbot and deer tartar we had). Anyway, while Boen Gård’s restaurant would definitely fit the bucket list of many food and wine connoisseurs, our group had driven all the way from Oslo to the Kristiansand-area to fish. And those that did best, of course, were the ones that skipped desert (and night caps, hors d’oeuvres and coffee) and went fishing instead.

The fish would mostly strike in the wee hours of the day – and at night, whereas in the daytime, they would only bump the flies (or, more likely, just ignore them). Although things looked bleak, we were encouraged by one of the local guides, who relayed a story about a recent visitor, who had been faced with similarly tricky salmon.

The story roughly went as follows. The guy had showed up with more luggage than anyone else, and the luggage was crammed full of different rods, reels, lines, poly leaders and flies. He had adopted an extremely methodical tactic and had gone through each pool with different setups and flies, had worked every pool carefully with his many different rod and line setups – casting, sequentially, at different angles, and experimenting with retrieves - until he’d finally cracked the code.

He would then catch a few fish, and – once the magic died out, he would simply repeat his empirical process anew. As a result, he had caught 4 out of 5 of the 40-some fish his group of six fishermen had landed.

Beginner’s Luck?

Our group, undoubtedly, would have caught more fish, if we’d experimented a whole lot more. But as it were, we went on and did what most salmon fishermen do best – swing their flies for the Nth time hoping for a flash of whatever divine intervention is needed to make the line come tight.

A few seatrout were landed, and a few fish were lost. The only salmon brought to shore was a shimmering silver female of about four kilos. It was caught in the morning, not surprisingly, by the guy in our group with the least fly fishing experience; someone who was completely new to salmon fishing.

Whether it was the salmon gods mocking the rest of us by granting a neophyte the silver prize so highly coveted and sought-after, or if it was simply because of the unorthodoxy and unschooled rawness of a beginner doing things differently, we’ll never know…

Fact File - Tovdalselva

The River Tovdal salmon season stretches from June 1st until August 31st. Fishing licenses for the beats below and above Boen Gård can be bought via www.laksefisk.no while Boen Gård is booked separately via http://www.boengaard.no

Kristiansand has its own airport and transferring from the airport to Boen Gård only takes about 15 minutes.

Photo: Vetle Kjærstad