Sartorial Elegance

As any fisher girl (or man - Ed) will tell you – it is not easy to look elegant in waders. Why do they not make decent, tailored waders? And what about the colour choice? "Yes ‘mam, we have a wide choice of colours – from light grey to dark grey."

Dressed to fish the Varzuga

I can always trust on Paul R and Michael H to set the tone here – if there were a choice of colours in waders they could cut even more of a dash. As it is they do pretty well. Paul this morning in a fetching pink shirt and The Hat. Michael in a bright checked shirt and his newly ordered tweed cap.

Do the salmon notice? – Maybe. We had a much better day, the best since 18 June and put a further 36 salmon in the book yesterday to add to the 18 of the first evening. The results were really evenly spread, everyone did pretty well. Smaller flies and floating lines were working well, but a few guests stayed with the safe option on an intermediate tip.


Michael H and the new tweed hat

Paul and Gordon B came into breakfast this morning after their customary hour on the river before Donna’s scrambled eggs with a salmon each and the chatter over the breakfast table was about trying surface fishing today. It is quite still today, warm’ish, and it feels a bit dour to me. We had really heavy rain for a few hours last night and the river has not dropped – I could do with a few more inches off it yet.


Party Pool and a Kola sky

Last week at Middle the team of 10 rods landed 119 salmon – great fishing in most places but not epic by Middle Camp standards. We had one really odd day, as did Pana. On 25 June we only landed eight, and up at Pana the team of six only had four salmon. The Pana team really do know what they are doing, Guy R, the team leader has only missed one year in the last 24. So it was not ‘operator error’ and I have no idea why the fish were so off that day. Pana finished with 123 for the week. Guy and the team mentioned that although the numbers of salmon compared to the record year of 2014 were down a bit there were many more large fish - something we are seeing too here at Middle Camp.

Benjamin G-B and a chunky Pana slamon

Kitza too had an unusual week – normally it fishes really well in late June being a later river than Varzuga. They recorded 69 for the eight rods – something to celebrate elsewhere but not up to our usual standards here; however it is the most delightful river to fish, probably the prettiest on the Kola and the team seemed content and happy with their week when I saw them on Saturday at Murmansk.

The salmon do seem to have responded to the brightly dressed team here this week. Let’s hope it continues in the same vein.

Christopher Robinson