A SPECIAL TOUR
Gentle Giants Whale Watching offers a wide range of seafaring tours as wildlife watching, fishing trips and visits to the nearby islands, just to name a few. Along that, we are happy to arrange and plan any kind of tailor made tours for our customers.
Below follows guide Miro’s story about a tailor made tour he went out for earlier in October – a tour which turned out to be a very special tour even for him:
“Earlier this month a group of people asked for a tour combining whale watching and sea angling, As 22 passengers was a bit too much for our fishing boat Athena, it was decided to take our wooden boat and former/refurbished fishing boat Faldur back out for fishing as fishermen did in the boat’s past.
I as a passionate fly fisher was so excited about a tour like this. Once we had boarded our guests, we sailed out into Skjálfandi Bay. It was cloudy, but beautiful. Whilst sailing over some calm waves, we were heading towards the mountainside, which was covered with a lot of fresh snow. Even though our season is slowly coming to an end, it didn’t take long and we were watching two humpback whales just next to each other – indeed (and as I use to say) two very “whale-watching-friendly” whales. Even though this is wild nature and these whales aren’t here to entertain us, sometimes - if one is lucky – it still really looks like it. We spotted the two very nicely many times and after about an hour, the group decided to go for fishing! In fact, to those who wanted to stay longer with the whales we offered some life jackets, but surprisingly nobody was interested.
Our captains know the bay like their own hands and after a few minutes we were on the fishing spot! The first fish didn’t let us wait for very long and it continued very well for the rest of the tour. I as a fly fisher could not come on this tour without my fly rod. Luckily our captain Hallgrímur is always up for something extraordinary and so I was allowed to fly fish from Faldur!
After just a couple of unsuccessful tries, I shouted, “Fish on!” It was quite a fight with my light rod, but I won and soon, with the help of our captain, I welcomed a very nice cod aboard of Faldur. A few casts later some monster from the depth took my hook away but it was anyways time to finish up. I started to prepare fish fillets for our guests. It was quite a lot of fish. Soon our captain said, “Last casts!” and eventually it was time to head back towards Húsavík. The sun was setting behind the mountains on our way home. For me, this tour was definitely one of the best and will stick in my memory for very long. At this point I’d also like to say thanks to our captain Hallgrímur.”
Story and Photos by guide Miro
