An era has ended – Hilmar tells the story!

From the book Salmon and cheerful stories 1979

The legendary net and wade fishing under Hellefoss in Hokksund on Øvre Eiker was considered the best inland fishing in Eastern Norway. From the glory days of Hellefoss fishing, record catches of 490–840 kg of salmon in one night, taken by four to six men, can be mentioned.

There is still a man living up in the small fishing village of Dynge, which was the landing place for the waterfall fishermen. His name is Hilmar Olsen, and he is a fisherman. Now he has been awarded the King's Medal of Merit in silver for his silver-shining salmon fishing for half a century, as well as for hatching salmon fry in the associated Ullern Hatchery. He himself has become a part of Hellefossen and the traditional fishing there.

Hilmar was born on March 8, 1900, naturally under the sign of Pisces. The sturdy fellow sits sprawled out in his easy chair and throws his leg on the tabletop. There is something solid and calm about him. He celebrated his honorary award with a slice of smoked salmon and a thick roll of snuff from 1938, duly stored in a glass bottle in a fish package. And the medal? Well, it should probably be attached to his blue jacket, Hilmar thinks. There it can shine brightly with the fishing spoons – it probably fits best that way.

Hilmar is definitely the biggest and most famous inland fisherman in Eastern Norway today. He pushes his sun hat back on his neck, spits out the snot and stuffs his pipe with heavily smoked MacBar. Then he strikes a match, smacks it and draws the smoke through the smoke screen:

"I started fishing when I was a fist-sized child. Back then, I caught small fish with socks made of skeins of yarn stuffed with rags. When I was twenty, I caught my first salmon. It weighed 18 kg. I barely managed it. The spoon fell out of its mouth when I pulled it into the boat."

Hilmar lives in a sort of Southern Norwegian environment in his white-painted house. Fishing nets and tools hang on the walls among photographs of his big catch. The door from the living room is wide open to the sunlight and the lush kitchen garden outside.

Professional fisherman Hilmar has caught countless large salmon with nets. He mentions sizes in abundance: 27½ – 25½ – 24 and 23 kilos are on his conscience, as well as 400 salmon in one season on Hoenssiden. Over the years, he has pulled in thousands of “small salmon” averaging 10 kg, but he doesn’t bother to mention that one.

– How did you feel when you caught your dream salmon of 34½ kg ? How did it actually happen?

Hilmar tells the story with the calmness and patience of a true fisherman:

"It was a July evening in 1925. We were going to do a haul with the wad, a warp on the Ullern side. The wad is a tool that requires two boats with three men in each. It was thrown in a half circle at the top of the ground and dragged down towards Vadøra, a natural place for ascent. In the previous haul we had caught 14 large salmon. I was a charr for the then base Edvard Hansen. He was the one who used to take the rod and hit the bait when we approached the ear. It was necessary to chase the salmon into the wad breeding ground, or vadpåsan, as we also called it. This time there was only one salmon at the very end of the calf. But it was really an adult salmon – in fact the largest ever caught in the history of Hellefoss fishing.

We rowed to the landing place and lifted it into the cabin barrel. New record, 34½ kg . Then one of the other anglers, Ole Wendelborg, said: “Guys, we’ll pull it out to the fishing hut so we can take a look and buy beer with the money.” Soon the rumor spread like wildfire throughout the district, and people flocked to the cramped fishing hut. Finally Ole exclaimed: “Carry it out again, people are tearing down the hut.”

Eventually the fuss ended. Part owner Nils Kruke bought the giant salmon for 80 kroner. He wanted to smoke it. Yes, he had enough salmon on the table for a long time to come.

There is a fantastic picture hanging on the wall in Hilmar's living room. One must lack any sense or interest in fishing if one does not immediately understand that here is an event somewhat out of the ordinary immortalized and set in glass and frame.

The picture depicts a young man holding a piece of salmon in front of him. Upon closer inspection, one sees that it is Hilmar himself who is depicted with the salmon, and it is natural to ask him: When, and where, and how?

Hilmar is always willing to tell, even now about this:

“Oh, yes, I'll probably never forget that fish,” he says, smiling broadly. “Kristian Ihlen and I caught it in 1926. The big one, 34½ kg, we caught the year before in the wade, so it wasn't a sporting achievement.

The one in the picture, on the other hand, I can say was a feat to pull into the boat; it was anything but a meal, as they say. Kristian and I caught it on a spoon the old-fashioned way, with a fishing line and all. We had the right to be a little high-spirited after we had caught that fish, especially considering that it weighed 26½ kg .

When it bit, I sat and rowed, Kristian held the line. It didn't make any big moves right away. We were both so experienced that we knew right away that it was a big fish we had on the hook. The big ones are always calm, small salmon from five to eight kilos are usually pure wild steers as soon as they bite, they skim to the sides, up and down the river, jump high into the air, and do everything they can to get rid of the disgusting "food" they have got in their mouths. A really big salmon takes it easy, it is like old and wise, "thinks" out ways to escape and calculates to come back terribly the next time. That was also the case with our salmon this Saturday in the summer of 1926. Without rushing, it took a few tough laps into Fossevja, stood still for a long time at a time, did not let itself be moved by the spot, and did not get tired at all. We prepared for a little bit of everything, and the excitement grew by the minute. After half an hour of casting and pulling in, we finally got to see it for the first time. It was about ten meters from the boat and arched up into the water crust in all its might. We were almost shocked, none of us had had such a lump on the hook before. I saw that Kristian was shaking all over, the hands holding the line were shaking. I guess I was just as excited myself. Would we get it, or were we going to lose it? Another half hour passed. Now the big salmon was starting to get irritated and apparently decided to get rid of this unpleasant thing that was mercilessly stuck in its jaws. It suddenly took a few sharp turns, rose and sank in the water, even made a couple of huge jumps with loud splashes above the water surface. It was truly dramatic, and the excitement rose to the breaking point. Soon the decision would be made - whether we or the salmon would be the victors in this fierce battle. The efforts gradually tamed it; it became weaker, allowed itself to be pulled further and further towards the boat, and finally it lay on its side, right in the middle of the slough. I saw Kristian grab the biscuit with trembling fingers, my heart jumped to my throat when he struck, hit it in the head, hauled the scrap up into the boat and laid it in front of my legs by the tofta. A blow between the eyes ended its life, victory was ours - the fish was ours. Then we noticed that the spoon had fallen out of its jaws. One miss, and it would have gone, just like it had with my first salmon. We looked at each other and exhaled. The excitement was over. But not the aftermath, the talk afterwards, the story of the feat, the photography and the memory of an extraordinary fishing trip. Yes, because there is still a picture of the salmon with Kristian in the background. We thought we deserved to have one of each of us alone behind it. Even the most avid fishermen only get 26 1/2 kg of such debris once in their lives, maybe never, Hilmar concludes with a smile. But alas, Hilmar sits and tells stories from the heyday of fishing. The salmon are almost gone now. And the environment that made the fishing village of Dynge a nationally renowned fishing spot is about to dissolve. The regulation of the waterway, the seine fishing on the coast and the longline fishing for salmon that are not ripe for spawning in the sea, where they will go and get big and fat, must be assumed to be the main reasons. The decline in the fish population has been significant since 1970. The last season only yielded about 100 small salmon, Hilmar says. In the heyday of waterfall fishing, 18-20 tons of salmon were brought ashore per season and put on ice for further transport to the fishing pier in Oslo. In the heyday, people flocked to Hellefossen from far and wide to see the spawning. Everyone wanted to see the spawning. Every evening throughout the season, people came by bus, car, bicycle or on foot. Fishing in the waterfall attracted as many spectators from the eastern countryside as a proper football match at home. When the big catch was placed on the hut's platter, a hiss was heard through the herd. There is excitement with salmon, whether you fish it yourself or just stand and watch. An era has ended. Today, one can only look back and console oneself with the memories of what has been, however meager a consolation this may be. Will conditions improve in the not too distant future? Will there be large quantities of salmon on the Drammenselva River again? Will the fabled good old days return? No one can answer these three questions. We have to live in hope.