Thursday, 16 May 2013

Normal Service Resumes

After a tricky day on Tuesday normal service was resumed yesterday with Middle Camp recording 64 salmon and Lower Camp 67. A much easier day, by no means warm but by midday you could have called it ‘soft’; the evening was overcast, the air temperature held up until almost midnight and it was distinctly fishy.
Arnauld F-M and Volva at Middle
At Middle Julian T hit a really big run of fish coming through Party Pool and had 15 by lunch time, he ended up top rod for the day with 20. Again the beats from Snake Pit and down are fishing best, there was a sort of attempt to get up Yovas Rapids, but I guess that the crackle of radios recording fish caught lower down was too much of a temptation and we have not really explored up-stream yet.

At Lower the start was a bit ragged after a well-deserved late night and we were a couple of men down for some of the day. The Senior Team of Alan J and Michael H had 12 salmon each, the third day out of four that they have each caught exactly the same number, they did much of the damage in Morskoy which was loaded with new fish in the afternoon, Michael had trouble keeping them on and reckoned that if he’d landed all he had hooked he would have had well over 20.

Tim T at Lower
At dinner we knew that Middle Camp were on about 60 for the day and we decided that we had to stay ahead of them (only to please our guides here you’ll understand!), so we took advantage of our warmest evening yet and in an hour and a half added another 7 fish to the book just to be sure that we’d be ahead of Middle. In fact that has been our only ‘out of office hours fishing’ so far.

Today has dawned bright and clear, great to see some sun back. Tom at Kitza was planning some test fishing with Ura today and if I hear from them this evening I’ll let you know how they got on. If it stays bright the water temperature should climb a bit today, the height continues to drop, and that will be the norm unless we get rain.

Oliver L who first fished Varzuga in June 1991!
Floating lines and intermediate or slow sink tips are working well. Flies are the usual eclectic collection according to personal preference, size ought to be 1" - 2". If in doubt use the Ally's Shrimp or similar pattern.

Christopher Robinson