After the gale

After the gale of the past two days the wind dropped overnight and we had a welcome calm day with high clouds, giving us much more pleasant fishing conditions. The water temperature remains steady in the 9°C to 11°C range and the level continues to fall towards ‘summer’ levels.

Over on Kitza, which is always a week or so behind Varzuga, the water level is still steady and the temperature remains 7°C. They had a better day today with 23 landed and a good number lost, Tom reckoned that the run was now really moving on up river and from this weekend they are going to push right up to the top beats while they have the water to do so. A wonderful chance for some guests to get up to areas we seldom fish.

Jessie, Lee, Steven and Pasha taking 'time out'

On Lower Varzuga we had a fairly quiet day, possibly due to last night! We did just get into double figures, the good news was that the bigger fish are still running and we had four real beauties in double figures. Floating lines are definitely in and we tried the Sunray again with some smashing surface takes.

Middle Camp picked up after a dour day yesterday and reported a respectable 74, also with a good number of bigger fish. As always detail is lacking I’m afraid as they are too busy fishing, I’ll try and sharpen them up next week.

Tomorrow I go to Murmansk to say farewell to the current teams and to see the new parties into their camps. I hope to be able to post a quick report tomorrow evening. I thought I’d finish this week with a couple of photos that show the changes over just 18 days. The new decking was finished today. More photos of the full refurbishment next week.

10 May

28 May

Christopher Robinson