FOREVER NOT IN CHARGE MY friend Sondre Beck Sletten once mentioned that perhaps the reason Arctic char had always stirred profound emotions within him was their unpredict-ability and complexity. They adhere to no strict rules, unlike the trout. He emphasized that there could never be a definitive “world’s best char fisherman.” “When you believe you’ve improved as a char fisher-man, you find yourself reopening the fly box once more, just to confirm how little you truly know,” he wrote in Oppstrøms , a Norwegian flyfishing maga-zine, attempting to elucidate ways to become a better char angler. And he has a point. There is a sense of relief in knowing that no one can truly claim to possess a de-finitive answer to the question of Scandinavian char. At the same time, this fish touches upon something more profound that I’ve long felt a need to define in some way, even if just for myself. The fact that I’m writing about it now should not be taken as proof that I’ve figured that out. As I get older, the attraction has gone from being a slightly unhealthy flyfishing fascination to some-thing completely different, something that borders on madness and that I am unsure is actually appro-priate to put on paper, considering the possibility of my loved ones reading this and thinking that I am actually crazy. • TOP TO BOTTOM • Chironomids and Arctic char are like yin and yang—they belong together. But the biblical quantities—of the chironomids—found in the mountains far north in Norway don’t make things easy. Slow fishing in two photos: Water droplets on tent fabric and bottle sedge reflections. THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 057
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.3: Page 57
