June up here is a strange, generous month. The ice went out a few weeks ago, the rivers have settled from spring melt, and from now until mid-July the sun never really leaves the sky. The grayling know it: they slide out of the deep wintering pools onto the riffles and start looking up.
People ask me every season what to bring. The honest answer is that after thirty years I fish maybe five patterns through the whole month. Here they are - the exact box I'll be carrying when the first guests of the summer wade in beside me.
01Klinkhamer Special, #14-16
If I could keep one dry fly for Lapland, this is it. The body hangs under the film like an emerging caddis, the parachute post stays visible in broken water - which matters, because our June grayling hold in the riffles, not the flats. Fish it dead-drift through anything that looks like a seam. When a grayling takes a Klinkhamer, it takes it properly.
02CDC F-Fly, #16-18
For the quiet hours - and in June the quiet hours are at midnight, when the sun sits low and orange and the water goes to glass. The F-Fly lands like nothing and rides low, which is exactly what those slow-motion evening risers want. One piece of advice: dry the CDC with a cloth, never with floatant, or you'll drown the magic.
03Pheasant Tail Nymph, beadhead #14-16
Some mornings nothing shows on top - cold night, pressure change, who knows. The fish haven't gone anywhere; they've just dropped a foot. A beadhead Pheasant Tail swung through the same seams finds them. I fish it under a small indicator or simply on a tight line downstream. Not romantic, very effective.
04Superpuppan, #12-14
The Swedish classic - ask for it by name in any tackle shop from Östersund to Kiruna. It imitates a caddis pupa stuck mid-hatch, and in late June, when the big caddis evenings start, it can outfish everything else in this list combined. Grease it and fish it in the film with tiny twitches. The takes are not subtle.
05Streaking Caddis, #10-12
The fun one. When caddis skate across the surface at midnight, tie on this deer-hair bug and strip it - actually strip it, wake and all. It breaks every rule of delicate grayling fishing, and some of the biggest fish of the season fall for it. If you've never had a 45 cm grayling chase down a moving fly under the midnight sun, June at Lapla is where that happens.
Five flies, one box, a river that never gets dark. June doesn't need more than that.
The riffles are waking up as I write this, and the first June groups arrive next week. If you want to stand in that water while the list above is still current - the calendar is here, and I'll meet you at the river.
