Friday 22 June 2012

Camp Life

There is a wonderful team of local Russians here at Middle Camp whose work, often in the background, goes un-noticed. Luda comes every year to run the kitchen and her grand-daughter, Sonya, keeps us all amused playing with the new camp dog Zlata who, being only seven months old, has taken to stealing socks from the laundry room - much to the annoyance of Julia and Julia whose roles are to keep the camp tidy and clean. This week Luda has been known as Doctor Luda as she has tended to three minor injuries and there is a queue at the kitchen table in the morning as cuts and wounds are dressed.

Luda tending to one of her patients, David B
Iliya, Luda’s grandson, runs the generator overseen by Sergei, in the evenings after supper the guides do an hour or so camp work; the latest task is to finish a new wood shed to keep the fire wood dry over winter. A great deal goes on in the village as well to support all the camps, from supplying the tons of fuel we need to keep the generators and out-board engines going through to ordering and dispatching the supplies we ask for from Marina in the Varzuga store.

Zlata with sock
As always it has been a pleasure to work with our Russian friends and partners this season and we are really grateful to them for all the assistance and hard work that goes into making the fishing programme such a success.

We had one of the coolest days for a couple of weeks yesterday and the air temperature struggled to get higher than 10⁰C. It was damp too with drizzle and rain from the North and, with a rising river, the fish were off the take a bit. That said we had a pretty reasonable day at Middle Camp landing 41 salmon with David S leading the way again with eight to his rod.

Sonya
Kitza had another excellent day and the Spanish team landed 53 with the fish well spread throughout the river from Sasha’s below camp right up to Rackmanns at the top. The Pana count for the eight rods up there dipped a bit and they recorded 49, encouragingly the fresh salmon are still running right through to Pana and they had several bright, fresh salmon yesterday.

David and Anthony ready to go fishing this morning
Tomorrow we leave for Murmansk and home – it hardly seems possible that only six weeks ago we were digging our way in through the spring ice and snow – it has all gone far too quickly.

We will post a quick blog tomorrow before we leave and next week Charlie will post a roundup of the season.

Christopher Robinson