Going for the trout

– We must go to Hylkje, to night! I checked the aerial photos and there got to bee trout in the sea.

Hylkjebukta is a shallow water small bay with sand bottom. Fresh water pouring out from a small river. Of course there have to be trout in the sea.

Bjørn pretends to be an expert, but it was a friend at work that told him the secrets about this fabulous trout place. Bjørn lent my rod and this mate thought him fly-fishing - or at least how to throw.

Down by the sea. The fly makes a perfect flight. Goes through the air and hit the water without a sound. A perfect cast. Four meters from the rock Bjørn stands on. The trout's break the sea and snaps after bugs. In the middle of the bay. Far, far away from us. This goes on for an hour.

Nothing on the fly rod. So Bjørn switches to a common cast rod. One throw. Second throw. The steel herring blinks in the evening sun, before it ducks in to the sea for a third time. Rings spreading in the water. Suddenly — the row bends. Bjørn explode in excitement. The fishing line vibrates and Bjørn keep the reel spinning.



Fish and predator.


Fly fishing in the quite hour.


Fishy eyes.


Look at him! Bjørn is nothing but one happy grin.

Diving mud

Diving from Sletten kai today was like diving in mud. The sea was one brown soup of mud and algae.

I didn't sea Nina on my way to the bottom. Had to sit still on the bottom for over a minute. Then I spotted her stream of air bubbles. A black shadow in the algae soup came towards me. After signaling, every thing OK, to each other we continued down and out of the harbor.

We have dived this place before, and therefore expected a clean sand floor. Not this time. Some brown algae I don't know have taken over the sea floor. This is usually a good place to pick scallops, but this time we didn't find many of them. Probably because of the algae. Got a handful of scallops and didn't see much else. But the cold May sun shined at us on the pier, so we used pretty long time to get our gear together. Just enjoying the sun, talking, eating and packing the gear together was worth the trip. After a rainy winter this cold sun was overwhelming.


Dive buddy Nina with treasures from the sea.


Me relaxing.

Diving with the colossus

This gigantic Nephrops norvegicus waves its claws against me. I stop. This is nothing like expected.

This colossus probably measuring up at 15 fabulously centimeters. He is king of his cave, and ruler of the sandy sea floor in front of me. Backing in to his cave he whispers silently to me: – Float any nearer and I will make seafood of you.

This dive was a pleasant surprise. Nothing like expected. Shallow water and a muddy sea floor was what I had pictured. The pier, where we could park our cars close to the sea, were the only reason for us to chose this place. I, and my dive buddy Nina, had also grown tired of our usual dive sites.

We saw many different sea animals. Ling was the most common fish at this places. A little bit surprising, because we didn't dive that deep. My depth meter stopped at 23 meters. They have probably come up from the deep cold fjord to prey on small fish in the warm shallow water.

I recommend this place to those who have just started out diving. There is no nasty currents here, nor no danger of getting to deep. You just follow the berg down to your favorite depth. When it's time to descent, just fin in to the each and follow it upwards. There you can take a really lazy safety stop. Laying on a shelf watching small creatures crawl around you.

TIL MEG SELV: Foruten lange, så vi flere sorter eremittkreps. Noen av disse hadde lange, blå tråder. Forskjellige sjøstjerner, en sjøpølse, små krabber, kråkeboller og mange kolonier med store o-skjell.