Thursday 23 May 2013

Up to Pana

Yesterday we flew up to Pana to help the new camp manager and cook set up the camp. It was great to see Tolli looking so well and the camp looks in good order. The new showers and plumbing are very smart and all 5 boats were in the water just waiting for someone to need them.

The water is quite low for this time of the year and Hippo Rock was well out the water but encouragingly, as we were moving kit into camp, we saw a few fresh fish showing just off the bank – it took all of our will power to focus on setting up the camp and not our rods.

Hippo Rock in the centre of the picture
I flew back into camp just as dinner was about to start and it was clear that some rods had done very well but others had struggled. On catching up with Hugh and Tom this morning, it would appear that everyone had a tougher days fishing yesterday but as Christopher wrote last week, tough is a relative term on the Varzuga.

We finished with exactly 50 fish in the book with Joe L accounting for 7 of them and he lost another 7 as well. Greig T and Alan M continue to be a fishing partnership to be reckoned with and they were both out this morning before breakfast where Greig had 4 and Alan added another to his growing total. John M also landed 4 fish this morning to set the day up nicely.

Damian and Charlotte
Kitza had 30 salmon for the day with Caleb S taking top rod honours by landing 10 of them. Tom said that they had a difficult morning but the afternoon session was much better with many more fish showing throughout the beat.

Middle recorded 79 with John R taking 10 of those. He also had a cracking fish of around 16lbs from Simmons which was measured at 34 inches. Martin L had 7 for his day and there were some early risers this morning out on Generator and Bear.

David S on Lower Sviats
It is a beautiful but very hot day today – the water is creeping up to 10 degrees and we are beginning to arm ourselves with floating lines - everyone was scurrying around after breakfast looking for Sunray Shadows and Collie Dogs and I hope we will see the first fish caught on a skated fly before too long.

Charlie White