| 
…immigration
and almanac from 1648...ancestors fishing salmon with fish spears and hunting
bears with muskets. 
My name is Snorre Grønnæss, born in 1945. I have as you probably understand spent
a lot of time with various sorts of fishing. My deep interest for the nature most
certainly lies in my genes. Quite back to the time when my ancestors from Finland
settled in this district in the middle of the 17th century, and nearly up to our
days, the forest, wild life and fish have been an important contribution to settlement
and survival.
I
am myself 8th generation on the family farm that was built in the middle of the
18th century. Different things we have stored on the farm from former days, witness
that times have not always been like to day. Of curiosities can be mentioned an
almanac from 1648. It goes forwards to the year 2000 and at the end we can read
the following hand written text: "If the world still exists" You can even to day
imagine the smell of bear from the muskets that were used in the 19th century.
The camera that my grandfather's grandfather first made use of, shows that the
industrial development has been revolutionary. He took up photography in the 1860's
and thanks to him we have a rich source of cultural documentation from the last
part of the 19th century.
Of fishing equipment we find fish spears obviously dimensioned for catching the
relict salmon that came from the Swedish lake, Väneren, which at that time went
unobstructed through the river system. We may in our dreams imagine that this
might happen again, though without meeting the salmon with spears. From the beginning
of the 20th century we have got fishing flies with Japan gut. This tells us two
things. First that flyfishing was taken up also in this region at that time, -
secondly that not only are the fishing lines enormously improved, but also the
fishing flies are totally different today. The flies from the old days were clearly
English inspired, - more or less full dressed salmon flies in mini size. 
Foto:
Tord Eriksson We
have for a long time said that there were more and bigger fish in our waters in
the good old days. That is probably right even if we unconsciously have a tendency
to glorify the past. Equipment and technique are continuously improved. Fishing
pressure has increased for a long time and I have during my nearly 50 years long
fishing carrier, seen that not only the number of the fish have decreased, but
the big fishes have been more rare in the catches the last years. Today we can
hardly imagine which quantities of fish there might have been in our river in
earlier days. Even if we also today think we have good fishing in Trysil river,
there is no doubt about what we see today only is a shadow of what it was once.
This observation underlines the fact that the river has an enormous potential
of production. 
My
vision is that we through the initiative, Gjerfloen Flyfishing, with bag limit
and a high minimum size, again will see a rising of fish nearly similar to what
our ancestors did in the good old days. E-mail:
gjerflue@online.no Tel:
+47 90 16 41 39 /+47 62 45 60 12 | 
