Mixed weather, good fishing

It was indeed a late night, a well deserved party for the guests here at Lower following an electric first day. All up on time this morning, bright eyed, bushy tailed and full of enthusiasm - albeit some looked a little less bright eyed than others!

Jessie James, Lower Fishing Manger - fine guide, fisherman and musician

Light but over cast this morning, air temperature at 12°C by mid-morning. Lunch time brought driving cold rain for a couple of hours and both Middle and Lower Camps had the guests come back to have lunch inside. Again a wonderful end to the day, clear and perfect light.

The water temperature is holding steady at 10°C on Varzuga. Kitza water temperature at 8°C. The drop in water level has slowed down and it is now dropping about one inch a day. It is a perfect height for all camps from a fishing point of view; we’d like to see some rain in the next week to keep it up for boating but at the moment we are getting through well enough to all the beats.

Hugo R this morning

I thought I’d recap on last week. It started really well, but, as I commented on 27 May, we had a nasty high pressure system sitting over us for three days, a harsh, bright sun and a wicked, cold NE wind. The pressure rose steadily on Wednesday and Thursday peaking at 1016 late on Thursday evening – I’m never sure just how much barometric pressure accounts for a salmon’s mood but many believe it does. The fish were noticeably dour giving lots of knocks and soft plucks without much aggression. On Saturday and Sunday (yesterday) the pressure dropped steadily, back down to 1006 last night and the fishing was excellent.

Despite the above we had a good week with 480 to the regular team of 12 at Middle, Michael Evans’s party of eight rods had 156 salmon from Lower and Kitza Camp, while New Zealand cousins Philip and Jerry, plus David, Martin, Lee and Steven had 130 to their six rods fishing the opposite combination. A pretty good result all-round.

Briefly to today – Pana had 38 salmon, again they are getting bigger fish, seven over 12lbs and another two at 20lbs. Middle had 94 and Kitza were on 40 (not bad for 5 rods!) – the fish are well up the river at Kitza; Goldmine produced really well today for Didier and Arnaud F-M. Tom and Ura are going to take the guests even further up tomorrow.

Julian P fishing with me this evening, a glorious sky and a fish on

At Lower we had 42. Lots of experimenting going on, I took Julian P out in a boat after dinner, we could rise fish on tiny skaters and medium Sunrays, but they really only wanted to take Pot Bellied Pigs. I’ll try again tomorrow evening, hope the next run through are more discerning.

This blog seems to have caught on – I know that Sarah, wife of Keith (mechanic and mender of anything) mentioned that the blog had not been posted this evening (about 9 p.m. UK time) so she did not know how we had got on today. Sarah, I'm running late, been fish'in – sorry not to see you up here this year, here is a picture (below) of Keith doing the water height from Keith’s Nail drilled in 14 years ago.

Keith measuring the water from his nail - 14 years of daily records - not bad!

Raining hard now - more tomorrow.

Christopher Robinson