At the foot of Rondane National park you will find the Atna water system. With it’s some 50 bodies of water and 150 km of river it has an abundent of fishing adventures to offer. We went out there with Fishspot coworker Bjørnar Hansen for a an adventure in the outback.

The area is situated in the mountains between Gudbrandsdalen valley and Østerdalen valley. The main river is the Atna river and is where out journey starts. The river feeds from the Rondane National park and runs from there through the massive Atna Lake and ends up in the Glomma river at the junction called Atnoset in Stor-Elvdal municipality. Up stream of the Atnsjøen lake there are only trout in the river, but downstream you will also find grayling. In the lake itself you will find a strain of very big trout and of course arctic char.  Among the options we have in the Atna Water system, we went for the still flowing and meandering section in the river north of the lake.

A section of the meandering part of the upper river.

The the jagged peaks of the Rondane mountain range as a back-drop the trip was all ready worth it, regardless the outcome of the fishing. Off course the hope of hooking up a good fish are always a motivation factor when going on a hike. Finding fish in the crystal clear water showed to be easy this time, as it snakes it way down the landscape with it’s light tan sandy bottom. The amount of fish on this river varies dramatically as the fish wonders in and out of the lake.

Finding the fish is a far way from actually catching it.  The fish has little cover or shelter in the river, and with the clear water it’s is very easily spooked. Usually you scare the fish way before you see it, with a shadow flashing over the river as the only indication you just spooked a fish off..

Small trout rising in clear water

When the trout is preoccupied with feeding in hatching insects, they are much easier to approach. This day it was mostly midge hatching and also som really small mayflies. With the trout picking off every thing they could see, we thought this would be an easy task, but this was not the case. I did not matter what we served them. Everything was refused. You could almost feel the fish mocking the flies that we had put so much effort in creating during the winter. In some instances you could actually see the fish on their back, rolling around the sand in laughter. Other times they just took off down stream as soon as the fly was presented.

The trout where small and had not seen many flies before, yet they wold not bite. Was it the presentation off? Was the tippet to thick for the clear water?

As you can tell the area can be very tricky at times, and as the day progressed, the Fishspot representative had turned to merely observing the fish rather than actually fishing for them. Who can blame him with his beautiful landscape. Switching the rod with a camera is not a bad shout in conditions like this. And it ment us having these nice photos to look at.

Hardly a ripple was made on the surface as this trout picks off a fly. 

With sun disappearing behind som low clouds of the incoming weather front, a trout was finally landed in the net. If not the biggest fish in the river, it was still a good representative of the local trout.  Light tan in the color and the very typical markings and spots that these trout have. The fly was carefully removed from the corner of the fish jaw, and it was slipped back into the water and back to its feeding ground.  A happy fisherman turned his boots towards home.

Bjørnar Hansen
Oversatt: Anders DE

En fin ørret med Atnas typiske tegninger får friheten tilbake.

Utsikten inn mot Rondane Nasjonalpark. Et fantastisk landskap og landemerke for området.