66° north - Jonas Ringman

This post is from Jonas Ringman a guide from Sweden. We met recently after exchanging a reel on ebay and he was cruel enough to send on these pics of some truly mind-altering browns! Jonas I will be forever haunted by these photos, the colors on these browns are insane. Hopefully, someday... someday... I'll get to stalk some fish like these with you! Add this to the bucket list.





66° north

Fishing in the far north of Sweden under the midnight sun. These browns are “top of the pop" fish from a summer season in my home waters in northern Sweden. Fishing starts in early June when the midge and stonefly hatches start and then peaks in late July with both large caddis, baetie and terrestrials like the lapland bibio pomonae. But it´s not until after most insects have died that the hogs enter the pitcher. Under second half of august when the nights starts to get dark and cold the hogs enter the rivers and make their way up to the spawning gravel. The best fishing time is dusk til dawn, with the dark and rainy night often producing the best fish. 7-8 wt rods with sinktip or intermidate shooting heads and 20lbs tippets is necessary to cope with wild native browns reaching 10-15lbs. Large tubes make for clumsy midnight tumbles when you brawl with a true hog and she takes you down a rapids.
© Jonas Ringman

Photo credits
Picture 1(049.df.jpg) small brown trout © Jonas Ringman
Picture 2 (SKA_2319.jpg)medium browntrout © Marcus Hallquist
Picture 3 (DSC_3301-2.jpg)large browntrout © Lars Ringman

Contacting me for guideing thru www.vuoggatjolme.se email helamb@vuoggatjolme.se or me directly on yourname@spray.se or +46733028652

Additional comments from Jonas:

Sure you can spend your winter days tying flies, watching tv or even work overtime, saving up for summer adventures. But i´ve got an addiction, much like gambling i guess, i just can´t stop my hunt for trout.

This winter, from Nov to the beginning of Feb, i did 80 days in the Swedish Baltic archipelago. Most days where OK, with temps over 32F and moderate winds.

After a week or two fishing saltwater in freezing temps, the skin on your fingers cracks and your back hurts after hours of deep wading and float-tubing.

In Stockholm archipelago there are some 35,000 islands and maybe 50 or so silver chasers,this is a cult or more like a sect, a sect of silence and secrets.

In the early years of the 90´s sea trout fishing was incredible, old timers talk about never doing a blank day! With average fish weight 4-6lbs and hogs reaching 10-20lbs, those where the dancing days!

This winter I made close to 80 trips, 6-10 hours days, landing 10 or so trout. A couple of fish around 20 inch, one after spawning 26 inch fish, but not quite silver more like stainless steel.

We have some "steelhead" runaways, fish bread for p&t lakes, hard fighting fish but i guess not what you would call a steelhead.

Kharma revarded me the last day fishing this winter, before leaving for the far north, a hog of 32 inch 12lbs silver bar, making all stormy days worth the pain.