Lynsey Mair, who many of you will have spoken to in the office and who is an avowed sun worshipper, will kill me for saying this but rarely have I been happier to see clouds and spots of rain as those that came yesterday. It was only a small amount of rain overnight but it is overcast today, as it was yesterday evening and it already feels a much more fishy day.
At Middle, their earlier start paid dividends as they caught plenty of fish in the morning but found it harder in the afternoon. The water temperature, despite the cloud in the afternoon, was 19 degrees and a lot of fish only half heartedly took the fly resulting in plenty of losses. They still finished with 78 salmon in the book with JP C doing very well landing 12 of those and John C, on his first trip to Russia, taking 9 for his day.
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| Howard E with one from the Wires in the morning |
Here at Lower Varzuga, nearly all of the rods were out by 7ish but it is fair to say that the early start did not make much difference. Fortunately, the overcast conditions worked much more in our favour in the evening session (from 6-10pm) and after a great brunch and a welcome siesta, we started to land fish across the beat. Not in huge numbers but everyone has now landed a Russian salmon and the mood at supper was much more upbeat. Terry H with 3 from Duck and Ken H with 4 from Bear Island were the star performers in a total of 18 fish for the day.
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| One of Ken's from Bear Island |
At Kitza the 8 rods landed 51 for their day, a great effort and everyone caught fish up and down the beat. David H had the best days salmon fishing of his life and landed 10 whilst Ralph W went from landing his first ever salmon on Sunday to landing 7 yesterday. Tom sounded pretty tired on the radio this morning and I suspect that the successes did not go uncelebrated.
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| Amazingly some of the ice still remains |
The 8 rods at Pana recorded 36 fish with David S the top rod with 7 for the day. They have stopped boating down to Ponzoi because of the water but also because it was not producing the huge amount of fish that it can. A lot of the fish are nearer camp which is where they will focus their efforts today.
With conditions much more suited to salmon fishing, everyone at Lower was up for the 6am start this morning but Gordon S was not content with that so started fishing Sabacci Rapids at 5am and had 2 on the bank before everyone else had grabbed a cup of coffee – a good start to what we hope will be a good day.
Charlie White
