A new fly

Experimentation continues. Yesterday evening Paddy F produced a good looking fly tied by a Spey ghillie and it was decided to copy it. However, missing from our fly tying kit was any suitable white hair. The only possible source was soon narrowed down to Mouchar (ch like lough), our large camp dog whose role is to keep bears off this island camp. Mouchar means fly in Russian so it all seemed to be coming together nicely.

Mouchar

Mouchar lives outside most of the year and his thick, back hair proved to be poor fly tying material. After some debate we recalled from where, on a rams anatomy, the body dubbing for the famous trout fly The Tups Indispensible comes from.

Now - those of you who know where on a ram the dubbing for a Tups originally came from will grasp immediately the delicate and possibly dangerous nature of the task ahead.

Franz van S, Hugh and Hans K designing the fly

Fortuitously we were able to pour sufficient vodka into Hugh, our camp manager, that he risked life and limb to acquire the necessary hair. So a new fly was born and taken on its first outing by Frans van S who landed one and lost three on it. It has yet to be officially named although several suggestions have been made, the only one I dare mention on this blog is the Mutts Nuts.

Keith J fishing Party Pool yesterday

I digress - on the fishing front, the Kitza party have landed 64 salmon so far this week with the better fishing on the higher beats. Low water is now beginning to limit their fishing to the more accessible pools. Pana continues to be excellent, yesterday Charlie T had 17 fish out of a total of 74. Here at Middle Varzuga we had 56 for the day with Simon G again getting a 14lber on a single handed rod and tiny skated fly. Party Pool was full of fresh fish yesterday - very encouraging.

Christopher Robinson