History

People have been fishing for Salmon in Göta River from time immemorial. In ancient scriptures, as far back as the 11-th century, we can read how the fishing was carried out and who owned the rights to fish in the river. Until the beginning of the 20-th century the ownership had alternated between private owners and the swedish state.

In the year 1908 Mr Emil Haeger (founder of Lilla Edet Paper Mill) sold the rights of the salmon-fishing to the swedish state. Today the owners are Vattenfall (a swedish water power producer) and Lilla Edets municipality. Sportfiskeklubben Laxen ( The Swedish Angling Club "the Salmon" ) is maintaining and administrating the fishing. Göta River have always produced a lot of fish except in the 50's and 60's when industrial pollutions reduced the number of salmons to a minimum.

The genuine Göta älv-salmon is probably non existing today because throughout several years Lagan-salmon fry was put out by Vattenfall ( the Power producer has an obligation to put out 30 000 salmon-fry per year). When this was discovered we switched to Säveå-salmon, a type genetically very much alike our old Göta älv-salmon. Furtermore the Säveå-salmon is somewhat earlier than Lagan-salmon, and because of that we have salmon already in May and not in the end of June like we had before.

Nowadays we have a very clean water compared to the late 60's when we had a 10 cm depht of sight. Today we have a 1.5 meter depht of sight in good wheather conditions and you can actually drink the water. Since 1983 when SFK Laxen was founded we have been involved in the salmon-fishing and we put approximatly 9000 hours/year in unpaid work by the establishment, all to make things work for the fishing guest.

Since the start in 1983 the amount of catched salmon has increased substantially. In the beginning we landed about 200 salmons per year and today we get 700-1000 a year (as many as 2028 in the year 2000 !). The goal is to get close to the weight and amount of catched fish that we had in the old days and to be one of the best salmonwaters in Sweden. Göta älv has been one of Europe's best salmonwaters but that was a long time ago.......

Mr Gunnar Holmgren with the biggest Salmon caught in modern time, weight 17.5 kg.