We are often asked what the forecast is for the day but the reality is that it is almost irrelevant. As we ate a picnic lunch in bright sunshine here at Lower, Middle Varzuga was being pelted with a serious hailstorm – they are only 12 miles away and yet we saw nothing but bright skies.
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| Maryke preparing lunch on the river |
Despite having their lunch rudely interrupted, the rods at Middle did not exactly wither and finished the day with 184 fish for the camp. Brian W had over 20 fish for his day but it was hard to pick out top scorers as they all did well. I am going up there this evening and I hope to get some of their pictures whilst looking forward to seeing how the whole river system has changed with the drop in water and the increasingly green surroundings that we now have.
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| Mark M on Bear Island |
It was changeover day for the Lower Varzuga and Kitza rods and at 7pm we all boarded the heli and flew the short distance to Kitza. We then stayed over there for about an hour and had an impromptu drinks party as each team of rods swapped tips and stories from their respective camps. Kitza has dropped about 2 feet since Saturday but we could probably do with a bit more coming off it for it to be in perfect shape.
They had had 29 fish for their day whilst the rods here finished on 34 with Bob C finishing on a high note with 4 fish from Moscoi Rapids.
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| Looking upstream at Kitza last night |
I was wrong about the trend at Pana as they did not double their score from the previous day but practically trebled it. 31 fish were landed to the 6 rods with Jose F-M the top rod with 11 fish whilst Luis F had the biggest fish for the day of around 18lbs. Mungo reports seeing many more fish than the day before and the run will gradually build from here.
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| Sergei and Feorder planning their tactics for the day |
We have a bright morning and the water temperature here is around 11 degrees so the rods who have come from Kitza have been busy swapping their sink tips for intermediates and straight floaters. Henry P and Bruce B are already on the score sheet and we are looking forward to another successful day.
Charlie White
