Sunshine

We enjoyed our first really warm, bright day yesterday. The sun shone down all day, there was a light breeze to keep mosquitoes away and it was proper shirt sleeve weather. The bright sun did not help the fishing much but after two weeks of poor weather it was a chance for the staff here to enjoy a taste of summer.



Freddie P fishing Scotts

Ollie L, Freddie P, and Peter and James D fished the top beat and landed eight salmon between them in the morning. The afternoon session was tougher although not for Lars B who had his best day salmon fishing ever with four to his name. James Fox, who normally is close to the top of the leader board had a blank day, most unusual for him. After dinner I took him out in the boat down to Party Pool and he soon hooked and landed a salmon – like Archie on the previous evening he was using my recommendation of a Dee Sheep on a ½" brass tube fished slowly and deep on a slow sinking tip.

Sonya, Genna, Natasha and Arina enjoying the first day of summer

With the water temperature up to 14⁰C after yesterday’s sun the text book would indicate floating lines and smallish flies but with the current water height we feel at the moment you need to get down a bit to the salmon. And with a smaller run of salmon this year no one yet is really experimenting with surface flies. With the river level on Varzuga dropping in now we might be able to change tactics later this week.

Hugh S yesterday

Over at Kitza Ollie reported that the river continued to rise most of yesterday and it was not until the evening that he felt that the rise had peaked. It made for another tougher day there and the team landed 12 for the day, with Richard S catching his first salmon on a fly.

James F at Party Pool after dinner

No news from Pana – the radio reception is poor to non-existent. Last week the team of eight at Pana landed 277 salmon. Here at Middle we had 194 with four people catching their first salmon ever. The eight rods at Kitza had 173, sadly they were missing Jonathan G who was hospitalised at the last moment – all of us here wish him a speedy recovery and we look forward to having him back on the river next year.

Nice cloud cover today, a medium breeze – it feels like a better fishing day.

Christopher Robinson