Back in the “good old days”, when nothing worked, we would crowd around the HF radio set and strain to make out what the camp managers were reporting every evening. It was often tough to understand everything and memorably, we once sent a pair of blue jeans to Middle Varzuga instead of the requested aubergines.
Now however, we have mobile signal in the three camps that we are running and whilst it is less romantic, it has to be said that it is much more efficient. This was amply demonstrated last night when Ollie rang in from Kitza to report on their first full day of fishing for the season.
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| Craig P, in the bright sunshine, at 8am this morning |
There was no mistaking the excitement in his voice and there was fortunately no time restriction on his reporting. A good job as it turned out as they had a superb day. 93 fish were recorded to the 10 rods with some fantastic individual scores. John M was the top rod with 18 fish, Craig C had 14, Paul P 11 and father and son team of Geoff and Findlay F finished with 19 between them.
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| The new dining and sitting room at Kitza - it probably looks a bit less smart this morning |
Geoff and Findlay volunteered to go upstream and caught fish all the way up to Beaver Pit but the majority of the fish were landed from First Island down – an indication that the run is just beginning over there.
Ollie probably wishes we were back to radios this morning as his voice very obviously betrayed that they had celebrated in some style.
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| Sergei with one of Boo V's fish |
Middle Varzuga also had a good day with a returning team of some very experienced rods. 72 fish were put in the book by supper. One of our regular rods had 14 of those whilst Keith B had a lovely fish of around 15lbs amongst the 9 he landed.
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| Joan G on Bear Island |
Here at Lower we had many firsts. Colin D landed his first ever salmon, one of 3 he had during the day, Jeremy and Boo V landed their first Russian fish, finishing with 13 between them and we had our first fish of the season on a hitched fly, landed by Ken B. We also had Mark’s birthday to celebrate and a delicious chocolate cake washed down with the obligatory vodka was a good way to end the day.
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| Our starter last night - really very good |
We ended with 28 fish between us which was a good start in soaring temperatures and 3 rods have been out this morning and all landed fish from the Heli pool so we look set fair for the day. Bill Drury and I are going over to Umba today to have a good look around and I will report more tomorrow.
Charlie White
