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Our Scandinavian friend, Stefan, from Frontsidefly.com sent us this great picture along with a note:
I caught and released this female salmon about 250 kilometers upstream in one of Sweden’s last remaining wild salmon rivers, the mighty Vindelälven. (Click here for a video from the river.) For all the rivers that enter the Baltic Sea, stocks have been very weak due to very high commercial fisheries mortality, diseases, and hydropower development. Gladly the populations are returning slowly, but positively. In this particular river, the spawners are counted at a fish ladder, and it was only 20 years ago that just a few hundred fish migrated annually. This year, about 10,000 individual salmon migrated upstream, which is truly a success!
I caught this using an 11½-foot, 7-weight Orvis Access switch rod, which is an awesome rod for fish up to this size. Normally, I use the rod for sea trout fishing, but I wanted to test it for salmon also, and it handled the fish without any problem.