ICELAND SALMON CATCH STATISTICS 2023 – Best Salmon Rivers in Iceland

Below is a ranking of the top 25 salmon rivers in Iceland in 2023 with total season catch statistics and the average catch per rod for each river. The 2023 salmon season in Iceland was marked by a prolonged drought during the summer. The lack of water negatively impacted salmon runs throughout all of Iceland, especially the western coast. The total catch of the top 25 rivers in Iceland dropped to 23,721 salmon, a reduction of 14% of the total of 27,484 rod caught salmon in 2022. The last part of the season was also marked by the massive escape of farm salmon from an operation on the north-west coast of Iceland. As the fish began to show up in rivers along west and north coast, some river managers took action to prevent these fish from entering their rivers by placing nets close to the river mouths to avoid these fish from spreading disease to the wild salmon or contaminating the rivers genetically by spawning with the wild salmon. This may have reduced the the numbers of fish caucht during the end of the season. The future impact of the escape will be hard difficult to calibrate. 

Once again the West Rangá was the most productive salmon river in Iceland. However, its total season catch of 3,587 salmon was well below the 5,086 salmon caught there in 2022. The East Rangá had the second highest catch with 2602 salmon. 

El Midfjardará once again was the third river in the ranking with a total catch of 1334 salmon, continuing the downward trend of the last few years. We have yet to see results of the actions taken by the river management to aid the salmon spawn, however, we hope to see improvement over the next few seasons.  

As for the per rod day salmon catch ranking, the three most productive rivers in Iceland were the Selá, the Hitara and the Hofsá. In contrast to last year’s results, none of top three are rivers which permit bait bait fishing.  

In the ranking below, you will find some links to information on some of the more popular rivers commercialized by Pescatravel. You can find additional information on our offering of Atlantic salmon fishing in Iceland at: SALMON & TROUT FISHING IN ICELAND or offering of ATLANTIC SALMON FISHING DESTINATIONS IN 2024.