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I was woken up in the cottage by the sounds of loads of singing birds and the sound of the green river rapids. I tackled up and got down to the river and it looked like a million bucks. I had a redbutted atomic stekel on the leader and I chucked it behind a large stone and bam a large fish attacked directly and took 10-15 meter of line with a slow but steady pull. Of course I thought that it was a large trout but then the fished jumped and it was a very nice grayling. The fished jumped some more and got down to bottom to do that grayling pushing in the deep. Soon enough the fish was tired and I hand landed it by the "bloody rock" just down the outlet of the stream. It was magical; my first grayling above the 1kg mark in Laponia and it was so beautiful with is shimmering scales and big dorsal fin. I sat down and took a quick drink out of the river and had a nice little smoke and I felt alive like never before. Then Andreas came down and asked how it was and told him that now the fishing part of the trip was complete and that i didn’t need any more big fish on this trip. We just sat there in the nice weather and felt like a million bucks!! Soon, I saw big shadow rise and take insect in the riffle part of stream upstream of where we were sitting. I put on a streaking caddis stillborn and threw upstream. A large fish rose and I immediately striked without saying God save the queen. Then it was no nice words that came out of my mouth, that I can guarantee you. But Andreas calmed me down with words that there is plenty of big fish here just wait until the evening rise. After this we caught and released loads of medium sized trout and after a while the hunger grew to magnificent proportions and we stopped for dinner knowing we would

be back in the late evening. After a nice dinner we were to full of food to fish and the evening and night was spent by the fireplace looking out onto the river with rising big trout on the calm water at the head of the stream. I have never seen so many nice fish feeding at the same place and still neither I nor Andreas didn’t have the urge to go fishing and was really content by just watching these great creatures from a distance. This was a true bliss of the heart and the conversation with Andreas was great and so was the malts. I went to bed that night and I didn’t dream of the dangerous mega trout this night. I just slept in peace.

Text: Per-Anders Nilsson
Photo:Andreas Lestander and Per-Anders Nilsson