Warming up

After a couple of really cold days the weather changed yesterday and the afternoon was glorious.  As we start to shake off the cold winter, all of the colours are beginning to come through and to see sunshine, masses of fish showing and rods up and down the beats bent into fish was to see the river at its best.

We had an excellent day at Lower and finished with 99 in the book.  By the time everyone had come in it was quite late so we didn’t know how close we were to the 100 mark – had we done so we would have delayed dinner!

Andrew W-D with a chunky fish from Morskoy

Bruce B had a fabulous day and accounted for 20 of those fish whilst Andrew W-D landed 16 to his rod.  The fish are in seriously good condition and every single one is giving a good account of itself.  John G was slightly losing track of how many fish he had caught and lost before his guide pointed out that his 6^th fish jumped 6 times which gave him a point of reference.  Morskoy Island and Beach are now starting to come into their own and we are just beginning to see the first signs of Bear Island appearing.

Roma with a perfectly proportioned fish

Kitza had a strange day and they finished on 17 fish.  I am not sure why that would be the case as the run was beginning to build and build so I think we just have to put it down to one of those things and hope that today is more productive.   It has dropped another 6 inches overnight and their water temperature is 7c – sink tips and 1 inch copper tubes remain the favourite set up.

Brendan G on the Mall

At Pana the first fish of the season was landed by Jose F.   With a much warmer day yesterday and today, the water temperature will rise quite quickly which will hopefully kick start the run up there.  A difficult week by anyone’s standards but on identical dates last year, this same team had a very productive week with low water and high temperatures so, as ever, predicting what is “normal” for any week can be quite tough up here.

Not a great photo but it shows the depth of some of these fish

Middle continues its superb week although the bright sun did lead to the numbers dropping off a touch.  We didn’t feel too sorry for them though as they still put 165 in the book with David C accounting for 19 of those – the rest were very uniformly spread across the team.  East Generator and Pertiha were the most productive beats but they have still not gone much above Clarkes yet.

A very bright day has dawned here but John G-H and Brendan G have already landed 6 fish between them before breakfast so we are off to a good start.

Charlie White