River Dee 20 to 27 July 2025. Middle Dee beat.
Summer fishing on River Dee is a brilliant experience. With so much beautiful nature, lovely pools and lunch huts with history enough to take anyone's breath away, this is clearly a pleasure to be part of. When you are also lucky enough to get good water flow with a run of salmon, yes, that tops it all. This year's July trip was like that for us.
After many, many weeks without rain in the Dee region, precipitation on our arrival day was very welcome. The river rose almost 1 metre, and there had not been such good water flow since March. We were, to put it mildly, very optimistic on Monday morning when our fishing week started.
Those who have been salmon fishing for some years know that it can often take a few days after such a change in water flow before the salmon are in the mood to take. They also often need some time on their migration, especially when the water temperature is high. That is what happened, and after 2 days of fishing we had landed a few sea trout and one salmon. The water temperature in our area of Middle Dee was between 16 and almost 18 degrees.
Further down the river, the water temperature was slightly lower, we heard, and good numbers of small salmon, medium salmon and some large fish were being taken. As the days went by, the temperature in the river in our area dropped somewhat, and we saw and more often made contact with the bright, fine salmon. Proper fun.
When the week was over, more than 130 salmon had been landed in Dee, across the whole river. We were lucky enough to be part of the catch statistics, and it became a brilliant week with plenty of fun. In addition to salmon, we also caught some sea trout.
Here are some Dee salmon from our July week.
If we are to highlight a couple of enjoyable fishing details from the week, it has to be team Asle. Asle from Bergen was on Dee salmon fishing for the first time. After a day's fishing with a few cautious little takes that did not produce full results, everything held all the way in on day number three. Asle was up early that morning and put on a self-tied fly in hook size 10, double hook. This was a copy of our HNN orange, which many may know from earlier. The salmon took directly, and it became a lovely fight for Asle, who now had a new river and salmon in the memory book. To catch salmon on a self-tied fly in such beautiful surroundings is absolutely brilliant, and we congratulate him once again on a fine start on River Dee.
Furthermore, Asle K. was the other part of team Asle. Asle is a very experienced Dee fisher based in Trondheim. And it was he who landed our largest salmon during the week. A fine male salmon of 86 cm. Also on his own self-tied fly, black with a little orange, not unlike our HNN orange. Unfortunately, we did not get a picture of the salmon, as Asle was without camera/phone when the salmon took, but that is completely fine, as the most important thing is to carry the good moments in your head. Congratulations Asle on a new fine salmon from Dee.
Between fishing sessions, some of us also took time for a little sightseeing. Fun to visit the local area and the different pubs and shops found here. We also took a trip up to the castle, Balmoral Castle. It is about an hour's drive from Middle Dee. A good time to visit the castle, as the garden was full of flowers. Recommended.
Many thanks to everyone who joined us on Dee this July week. It was a brilliant week with plenty of fun, good food and drink long into the small hours. Fantastically pleasant to sit outside on the terrace until after midnight when the temperature is over 18 degrees. Proper summer, in other words, and of course it tempts a repeat. Planning has already started, for your information.
During the week there was also time to take pictures and film of some 2instincts products. Below we show the possibilities that exist when using our very practical landing net. A light, practical net should be taken on all fishing trips by us sport fishers, as it was in the old days :-)
Fly fishing regards from a very satisfied tour leader, who also got to release some salmon back into Dee this week.
Helge Vetås