Highlights
It's our birthday
Angling club Lax-á celebrates twenty years of pure adventure!
To all our good friends, clients and wellwishers home and abroad we are proud to present, that we are currently celebrating our twentieth aniversary. That’s right, the Lax-á angling club has been around for twenty years. It doesn’t seem that much looking back, but that just goes to show you that time flies when you are enjoying life, doing well and making progress. We are not entirely sure which day in October we turn twenty so we’ll be celebrating the whole month! Over the course of twenty years we have come a long way. From being a young couple starting with nothing into a company that is probably the biggest pure angling/hunting outfitter in the world. It all makes you think what might have and what might not have been.
It all started in 1987 when we decided to try for something bigger. Over the preceeding years we had been scrapping, guiding individuals and forming small groups here and there, purchasing from others the needed quantity. But we felt we were ready for a change in 1987 when the Laxá í Kjós, one of Iceland’s prime salmon rivers, became available to the highest bidder for the management. We put in a bid that turned out to be the highest one, yet we were stunned when we got the phone call from the landowners association saying that we could drive up there the next day to put pen to paper. The only trouble was that we didn´t have a cent to our name and for the next twenty four hours we scoured the phone books for likely wealthy types who might be interested in a small adventure with a promising young couple! It’s almost an adventure in itself that it all worked out in time for the contract meeting. Two well known bussinessmen in Reykjavík, Ásgeir Bolli Kristinsson and Skúli Jóhannesson, were thrilled with the idea and put up the cash needed. The rest is history as you might say, although for the next six years we confined ourselfs to managing the Laxá í Kjós, excluding a few small time experiments that didn’t work out and only added to our long term experience.
Prices were already going up in those days and most of our rivals for the Laxá í Kjós predicted gleefully that we would soon be bankrupt. There was a real doomsday athmosphere surrounding our entrance to the scene and the writing was supposed to on the wall for us. We decided to scoff at the detractors and going bankrupt was never on the cards. In fact we really got lucky. In the preceeding years to 1988, one summer after another had been draught stricken and the salmon runs all over the country were dwindling. But our first season on the Kjós saw great consistent water levels, huge record runs and a sold out river. The runs and fishing varied over the years of course, but fortune smiled upon us constantly and those were years never to be forgotten.
Eventually our good friends decided that they would leave managing salmon rivers to others, namely us, and kindly allowed us to buy them out of the company for two Is-krónur. The smalles amount of small change imaginable in Icelandic currency and it can be categorically stated here and now, that we accepted their kind offer and this time we were ready with the money up front!
Ásgeir Bolli and Skúli, you see, are our benefactors. They are the people who financially set us up. For that we are indebted to them forever.
Instead of going for Laxá í Kjós when it became available again, we started looking around and kept an open mind. We went in for many rivers that came on the market over the following years. Some we aquired, some we didn’t as it goes, as the rivalry is great amongst a few companies in Iceland. During those early years we split our energies into different projects as well. At one point we were for instance running two leading angling shops and a car rental.
Soon enough though, we found out that it would be far best if we concentrated on doing what we were best at, and that was selling fishing permits. And from the onset, we have presented our clients with an exceptional collection of some of the leading salmon rivers in Iceland plus several outstanding trout fisheries as well. Among our stalwarts are Miðfjarðará, Blanda, Laxá á Ásum, Víðidalsá, Svartá, Langadalsá, Laugardalsá, Straumar, Tannastaðatangi and the West Rangá, which is a hugely succesful river based on smolt releasing projects. Also, for years we have bought up most of the fishing rights from the land owners on the East Rangá, which is likewise a hugely successful smolt releasing river, to make available to our clients.
Over the last two seasons both Rangá rivers have produced salmon totals not before seen in Iceland over the course of one season. Along the same lines we have since aquired a large river of great beauty, a mere one hours drive east of Reykjavík, the Tungufljót, which we are sucessfully turning into a high class salmon river, one that could, and will, in time rival the Rangá rivers.
The management of local rivers is our bread and butter, filling up 80 percent of our turnover. But this is an ever changing scene and things have been changing fast over the past few years. In 1996, we first ventured to Argentina to sample the world famous sea trout fishing. It was a far greater experience than we had dared to dream of. Having always had a craving for fishing and hunting experiences abroad, this was the start of big things that have since been getting bigger on a rapid scale.
Over the years, great experience was aquired in fishing abroad and a number of friends and contacts were made that often turned out to be more than useful and willing people to work with. After filling up several groups to Argentina, the Lax-á company added some excellent locations in Scotland and Central America as well as in Cuba. All were thrilling options and the foreign clientele was growing. Four years ago came a huge and significant breakthrough when we made our first impact in Russia, leasing the rivers Kola, Kitza and Umba. Later we added parts of the Ponoi and others and today we have four hundred anglers going to Russian salmon rivers every season, compared to one hundred going under Lax-á banners to Argentinian sea trout rivers.
The local scene is pretty much in a rigid mode these days and foreign opportunities are definatly what we are looking at, and into, to grow bigger and to add to our options. Prices are high. That goes with the demand. That is why anglers need options and that is what we are all about. Instead of expanding more in Iceland, we aim to do so on foreign soil. Over the next few months we will be presenting some sensational new deals and locations. Stay logged to our website www.lax-a.is to stay posted.You could say that home has become to small for us, which is typical when a child grows into an adult.
On home ground we will on the other hand mostly be adding to the already outstanding overall standard for our clients by making the great lodges even better. Icelandic lodges are of a high standard but we have seen what can be done better by observing how things are done abroad, in Argentina for example. There is still ample room for improvement.
It is fair to say that over the course of twenty years Lax-á has seen good times and bad times. The economic landscape in Iceland is often volatile and inconsistent. Plannig in a bussiness such as ours is often almost impossible due to ever changing ups and downs of currencies. So it is most important not to fall asleep when the going is good. Better to use the good periods to good effect in expecting that worse times may be just around the corner. And by doing so we have for instance once survived an almost total shift in foreign clientele as American clients almost to a man, stopped coming to Iceland due to the stance of their dollar weakening towards our Is-króna. We needed to adjust fast and pour money and resources into finding a new foreign based clientele, one that was based on other currencies. For a while we really had our heads on the chopping block, but as it turned out, we had the strength, character and the resources to weather the storm and today, most of our foreign clients are from various European countries.
And after twenty years we are still here, stronger than ever. We feel fit and healthy, bursting with vigour, energie and experience. And we know that we no longer need to prove ourselfs to anybody or shovel endless funds into marketing. Everybody knows us and what we stand for by know.
We would like to thank all of our clients and friends. These have been a thrilling twenty years and we fully expect to be with you for at least another twenty years and then probably twenty more. We feel that we are only just beginning and that so far we have only shown you the top of the iceberg.
Please accept our warmest regards and gratitude for your time spent with us over two decades of pure adventure.
Vala and Árni
