The current was pressing hard against my legs. The river felt cold and fast, but the weather was sunny and warm. I was standing hip deep in River Rena in Norway. It was early June, 2014. The bank side vegetation was light green, dense – and hanging out over the river. There was absolutely no room for a back cast, so I roll casted a Teeny T-200 line out across the river. After each cast I mended the floating running line and let the weighted Sculpin imitation sink deep down, before starting the swing.

My Sage RPL 907 turned out to be ideal for this type of fishing, having a deep flexing action and lots of power in the butt section. You don’t really want tight loops, when you are slinging fast sinking lines and heavy flies. I felt the fly ticking the rocks on the bottom – tick… tick… and then there was a heavy tuck. I raised the rod, and the strong current built up pressure on the line. Fish on! And definitively a good one. It didn’t feel like a brown trout though.

After a few minutes I landed the fish: A beautiful grayling. And, even for this fabulous river, a really large specimen. Quite a lot of large grayling and trout hit our streamers during 3 days… while I was conducting a streamer fishing class on Rena Fiskecamp in Deset.

In the previous winter Lars and I had talked about the idea of doing some streamer fishing – as an opportunity to enjoy some quality fly fishing before the top season in the river. And the idea turned out to be valid. Together with a bunch of great Norwegian fly fishers we had great weekend streamer fishing.

This year we will try to pull it off again, only… starting a bit earlier in the season. Here are a couple of photos from our streamer fishing class in 2014. If you are interested in getting in on this year’s class – contact Lars or me for more info.

I can’t wait to get up there again – swinging streamers for grayling and brown trout :0)