Trials and Tribulations

Of the 67 guests we have had fishing with us this year at Middle Camp only seven have not fished Varzuga before. With so many fishers returning year after year as they get to know the river and its challenges inevitably they get bolder in their fishing and particularly in their wading. The slightly higher water this season has caught quite a few out. I have not reported on the Varzuga International Swimming Championships on this year’s blog as we have had so many entrants it is difficult to keep up with the scores. What I can report is that the gold medal will go to two guests from Belgium who worried their trusty guide by going for the Synchronized Swimming competition and floated gracefully past as a pair.



Yesterday's mystery entrant in the swimming competition

We had lunch at Snake Pit and Donna brought up two roast chickens with all the trimmings to reward the mornings hard work. We relaxed for a few minutes and tried out various rods and lines with Terry talking us through the various set ups and their merits. Inevitably Simon R hooked a fish in front of the gallery which was duly netted by Bent H.

Simon R and the lunch time gallery

Just when Terry and I thought we would get through the season without a boat breakdown the starter motor on Skylark, our big boat, decided to fail up at Clarke’s – so we lashed her to my new Alumacraft and recovered her to our island camp to await Glenn’s attention next May. As always we have spare boats and engines here, but we are sad that faithful Skylark (launched in 1994) did not make it through to the end this year.


Recovering Skylark down Simmons

Up on the top beats Finn the Fish was finally out fished by his fishing partner Steen P, the score was eight to Steen and seven to Finn; all 15 salmon were taken from Scott’s which is fishing like a dream at the moment . Not to be out done Finn went out after dinner to level the day at 8:8.
Overall it was another really good day’s fishing, the total of 70 salmon was pretty evenly spread with Simon R into double figures with 10. We had hoped for a good evening after dinner, but the cloud cover vanished and under the chilly, clear sky we only managed three from Generator so we called it quits early to get a good night’s sleep and be fresh for the last two days.

Bear Pool at a perfect height yesterday

The weather remains settled in from the North, not so windy today and with a mixture of sunshine and clouds; but still quite chilly, it is 10:00 here now and the air temperature is only 6⁰C – not a mosquito in sight!

Christopher Robinson