I`m trying to send a small amount of BitCoin via electrum wallet to my hardware wallet & i`m getting about 40% fee.
I then adjusted the fee paid bar left to the max & its lower but still high saying - "the fee for this transaction seems unusually high 5.06%".
For comparison I transferred about $300 at the weekend from an exchange to hardware wallet and was charged less than $1.
Last weekend, you can move your bitcoin with fee rates like 2-3-4-5 satoshi/vbyte. Now, if you check Bitcoin mempools, you will have to pay fee rate like 30+ to 40 satoshi/vbyte to get a confirmation quickly in possible a next block.
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weightIs this an electrum thing?
Nope. It's Bitcoin blockchain and mempool thing that you need to learn and master it for your Bitcoin transactions in future.
is there anything else i can do?
Wait for the weekend. It's Thursday already but with a Bitcoin bull run, fee will be high for a while.
as far as i know i only have one active address in my wallet
Bitcoin transaction fees depend on your inputs, outputs because it contributes to your transaction size.
Minimize your transaction fee with Electrum wallet