Odd Borlaug goes fishing just about every day during the summer season, but didn’t start going after wild salmon until he was 75. On Monday, at an age of 101, he hooked one that weighed 4.2 kilos (more than nine pounds), but that was small fish compared to what he caught on Tuesday.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported that Borlaug, fishing at Vik in the mountains of Sogn og Fjordane, snared a salmon that weighed in at 15.8 kilos (nearly 35 pounds).
“I’ve never caught such a big salmon,” Borlaug told NRK, adding that the biggest he’d ever caught before this week was 8.5 kilos. The salmon was almost as long as Borlaug is tall.
“I think it took nearly an hour to get him up on land,” Borlaug said, referring to the salmon. Since the fish took all his line, he had to give his pole to someone else who could follow the salmon and reel it in, “but anyone else would have needed help with it,” said Morten Jacobsen, leader of the Vik hunting and fishing association. Jacobsen was mighty impressed with Borlaug’s catch, speculating that “he must be the oldest salmon fisherman in the world who has caught such a big salmon.”
Borlaug wasn’t resting on his laurels after getting most of the big fish into a freezer. “I’ll be down there (on the river bank) tomorrow, if the weather is good,” Borlaug said.
newsinenglish.no staff
