Well after an eventful 7 days in Vega I can only say that I have been won over. What a place. Even with all the luggage troubles we had, it really was amazing.
We all arrived in Dublin airport at for the first of our 3 flights to final destination in Bronnoysund. When checking into Dublin we had a lot of confusion.
The lady at the KLM desk said that our bags would need to be collected in Trondheim and rechecked in, the manager at the desks told us that this was incorrect and that the bags would go all the way and assured us that this is how it always works.
Our flight from Dublin was to arrive in Amsterdam and we would only have 50 minutes until our next flight leaves. We arrived in Amsterdam with 20 minutes to spare and we had to change terminals. If you have ever been to Schipol airport you know that it is far from small. We ran from our arrivals gate to the departures gate and managed to just make it. Last people on the plane. We arrived in Trondheim and this is where it all goes wrong. When exiting the plane we ask the woman at the check in desk do we need to collect our bags. She said “yes, you must always collect your bags when first entering Norway”. Great! we get to the baggage claim and guess what, no bags. We assumed that they made a mistake and that the bags were automatically going to Bronnoysund. We get to our departure gate for our flight and ask the staff. They said that we should have collected our bags here. They radioed to baggage claim and asked where our bags were. No sign of the bags. 10 bags missing . Great! We get on the plane as we have no other choice.
We land in Bronnoysund and as you can see from the photo, we only have 3 small bags. No fishing gear, no clothes, nothing. Widero customer care could not have been any more helpful. They said that the bags never left Amsterdam and we should have them tonight or tomorrow morning. Not the end of the world. We were all so tired that this wasn’t an issue and welcomed the idea of a rest before fishing hard.
We went on our merry way to get some shopping before heading to our house for the next week. Now If you have never been to Norway let me give you some advice. Bring lots of money. This is not a cheap country and shopping really makes this clear.
We collected our cars from a local rental company that does cheap cars for people on fishing holidays. Basic, old and perfect for what we were using them for. From here we headed for the ferry to travel to Vega Island where we would spend the next 7 days.
We arrived on Vega and an hour later and drove to our accommodation, Gardsoya Robuer. This accommodation has on site boats to rent, 6 beds, massive chest freezer a sauna and filleting house. It is a great spot. There is a mark directly behind the houses that was very useful but we will get to that later when our gear arrives.
We get a phone call that night to say that 7 bags had been found, but they couldn’t tell us whose bag and what bags. So we just had to wait. At 11 pm a taxi arrived with gear. All of Charlies including his rod tube, Ian’s clothes and fishing bag, Alan’s fishing bag, clothes bag and all of our bait and then one of my bags that only had t-shirts, jumpers and a pants. They said the other bags went on a different plane and they are trying to locate them so for the night we sat on the decking and a a quiet few.
The next day we said we had to go fishing. Charlie was kind enough to offer all his rods to us until we had ours. We went to a mark we were told would produce Halibut, Wolffish, Cod , Coalfish and big Plaice. We all sat on this lovely little rock and used every rod available. Light spinning gear all the way to heavy boat rod were all cast out. This mark ended up producing some OK Cod and Coalfish. mostly on lures. Unfortunately I managed to snap Charlies ugly stick in half on my 4th cast.
Great start to the trip.
Next Part will be up in the following days so watch the Instagram and Facebook
-Tight Lines
