The Varzuga
is an endlessly fascinating river and every year it can surprise you. At Lower Varzuga the river is roughly 250
yards wide and yet yesterday it dropped 8 inches – that is a huge amount on a
river this wide. It means that across
all camps, new beats are coming into action and the pools are starting to show
themselves.
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Joe and Lucy M on Morskoy |
Such was the
scene for yesterday’s fishing and seeing rods standing on Bear and Morskoy
Island made us feel as if Lower is really coming to itself. All of which led to a great day and we
finished with 84 fish to the 10 rods. Father
and daughter team of Joe and Lucy M had a fabulous day landing 21 between
them. They had a memorable double hook up
at Morskoy Island and had action throughout their session. We lost a lot of fish yesterday, for whatever
reason and whilst Peter H landed 12, he also lost 24 more that he had on for
various lengths of time which gives you an impression of the amount of encounters we are having.
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Bruce B on Larder |
Perhaps the
best news of the day came from Pana. It
was not a record day by any means but with the 7 rods landing 10 fish it was a really
encouraging day. They landed some of
those at Ponzoi but also landed a couple in the pool beside camp which was just
what we wanted to hear as it means that slowly and gradually the main run is
getting to them. On past performance we
would expect the numbers to climb exponentially with every passing day.
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Brendan G with another great fish from Morskoy in the afternoon |
Kitza had a
decent day but again it was a little odd.
They landed 20 fish which was not a bad result but we would have expected
more. 4 fish were landed from Goldmine
which is the first time they have landed fish that far up river and shortly we
would expect the whole of the upper river to open up which is probably the most
beautiful of all of the sections that we fish across our 4 camps.
Middle
Varzuga has now broken through the 1,000 mark for the week. It is easy enough to type that but it is an incredible
number of fish for 12 rods over 5 days of fishing. They landed 137 yesterday and Steven C was
the top rod with 17 fish which demonstrates how evenly the catches were spread.
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Joe, in the bright sunshine, on Beach |
It is the
last day of the week and various rods are hatching plans to miss dinner and to
carry on fishing as it is really too good to waste so I suspect final numbers
will be quite strong but I will report those on Sunday when I next update the
blog.
Charlie
White