Fishing in Vesterelva

I was fishing with my brother in law in Vesterelva in Norway on Friday evening and Saturday. I've heard a lot of good about the river, the river is full of salmon and they bite your bate (actually only fly allowed) more eagerly than in most of the rivers. So our hope were high when we headed there. First negative surprise was the cost of fishing license for Vesterelva. We had to first buy the Norway's national fishing license which was 275 NOK for a year (we were told you can't get the license for a shorter period). And then we bought the 24 hour license for the river which was 300 NOK. So all together we paid 575 NOK each for a day's license...I think it's something like 65 €. I know there are lot more expensive rivers even in Norway, but this is more expensive than for example the licenses for Teno river and I think it's quite a lot for a small river like Vesterelva.

The next disappointment was that we didn't catch anything. It was a new river for both of us, so we didn't know where to focus our fishing efforts. Also we heard from the local fishing guard that there hasn't been a lot of salmon in the river this summer. Also some fishing tourists that had been fishing there for years confirmed this. Maybe it's because the water is very high and cold? Oh well...I'll go there again next summer as the river is anyhow very beautiful and in the end we were shown the places where to focus our fishing to be effective.