I have had the pleasure, while writing a blog, to see the broad appeal of fly fishing around the world. Some parts of this world seem harder to explore than others, to gather a sense of fly fishing. One of these places was Iran. Iran is often overshadowed by ranting, fist waving leaders. In fact, Iran is an immensely beautiful country, full of expansive history, sophisticated culture and beautiful people.
Recently, SwittersB was fortunate to make the acquaintance of Amir Salehi, via Maryam Peigahi on Facebook. Currently, Amir lives in Sweden. However, he was so kind to provide information about his early fly fishing in Iran.
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- Mountain Stream by Amir Salehi (SwittersB)
Amir writes: “I worked as journalist for more than 6 years in Iran on a hunting and fishing magazine : “Nature Funds Courier” and wrote mostly articles on fly fishing and catch and release fishing to teach the culture to Iranian for being ethical while they fish.
The book “Mahigiri dar Iran ” which means “fishing in Iran ” is an encyclopedia of fishing in Iran and I wrote the fly fishing part of the book. Some pictures from Lar my favorite place in Iran is attached.”
Further Amir writes: “In north of Iran there is a chain of maintains called “Alborz”. These mountains contain plenty of springs and rivers that support the water of cities as well.
Brown Trout is the purely native specie of Alborz Mountains, with its own specie type. The Lar area was one of the most important ones, which recently became national park. These mountain have variety of wildlife species such as Alborz Mouflon, Persian ibex, Persian leopard, wolf, Persian partridge, etc. It was Iran kings hunting area and fishing area as well.
In 1860s sport fishing was brought to the country by diplomats from French, USA and Britain. Britain, and USA diplomats also had a special summer camp in Lar area. After the starting the Dam project in Lar, it became even more popular where Italian engineers, who were working there started to catch brown trout from Lar. Other rivers in Alborz also had the native Brown Trout. The record for a Brown Trout in Iran is for Karadj river, which was hooked and landed by an American diplomat in late 70s (The brownie more than 1 meter long).”
A special note, within the week comes the Persian New Year, Nowrūz, which transpires upon the vernal equinox. Read the attached link to learn the ancient heritage of this special event. I hope to learn more about Iran’s fly fishing from Amir. However, he may be too busy catching Atlantic Salmon and other species in Sweden.
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