Monday 20 May 2013

A superb start to the week

The second week of the season has started in style with all of the camps reporting some great fishing.

Being based at Lower Varzuga, it is inevitable that we hear more first hand accounts of battles won and lost here than we do about the other camps but it was clear that both Hugh and Tom had plenty to tell me and it was highly encouraging to hear their enthusiasm despite a rather crackly radio last night.

At Lower, many of the experienced rods broke their own personal records with Eric W landing 11 in his morning session at Bear Corner whilst Ed M finished with 14 fish for the day. Caleb S was not keen on coming back into dinner and who can blame him as he capped off a brilliant session by landing his 21st fish of the day.

Ed M at the bottom of Bear Island
Over dinner there were many tales of fish lost when firmly hooked which was backed up by Michael E, who has been here countless times and knows the beats intimately, who recounted how he had lost 8 fish in a row on Bear Corner before landing one. We concluded that it was entirely possible that the 10 rods had had encounters with well over 200 fish yesterday with 107 of those actually landed – a great day in every respect.

As regular blog readers will know, getting definite figures from Middle Varzuga is practically impossible as at nearly every hour of the day, at least 1 or 2 rods will be fishing but Hugh said his best estimate was that they were up to around 135 in the book since the team landed on Saturday evening. They most productive fishing is still below Clarks but every day more and more fish are being landed in the higher beats.

John M, fishing with Ed at Bear Island
The day at Kitza was a tale of two halves. They concentrated on the normally productive lower beats in the morning but very little was caught below Sasha’s which is strange for this time of the year. At lunch they decided to head upstream and immediately started finding fish. Understandably the team are keen to go up there today and it will be interesting to see how they get on. They landed 35 for their day with Alan M taking a cracking fish from Gold Mine.

Blogging - Russian style.
It is cold this morning with a biting wind but Sue C landed 5 fish before breakfast from Heli and the weather has not dampened anyone’s enthusiasm. The water temperature is at 8 degrees and dropped only an inch overnight; we are hopeful of a similar day to yesterday.

Charlie White