A new dawn

What a difference a day makes – after the previous days’ entertainment, this one has started with an early down pour and a good breeze. All and sundry headed out with great hope.

As mentioned previously this is possibly not a year to be described as vintage. However, when a team of 12 rods (half of whom would be described as occasional fishermen) is consistently returning to the lodge with in the region of thirty fish netted each day, life’s a whole lot better than you may have heard!

Experienced rods picked fish from pots

Middle camp has produced 31 and 29 fish for the last two days and yesterday particular mention must go to Ian S who landed eleven fish and lost a further five and is far less disillusioned with his sticking power. As a direct reversal of roles from the previous day, Doug U landed four fish…… and lost ten. I can’t wait to see how this battle has panned out today.
On the opposite bank (between Boundary and The Slabs) new boys Stefano M and Joseph C landed four fish each. They’ve both fished here a couple of times before, but the amount of fishing they’ve done elsewhere suggests this is the only place one should fish! Joseph freely admits he’s hounded Bill Drury into sharpening up every one of his casts…. It’s clearly coming to fruition. Well done.

Elsewhere on the river it was fairly slim pickings and even the experienced rods were only finding the odd fish willing to play ball. A change of beat demarcations and a concentration of rods on the upper pools will hopefully produce more evenly spread sport.

It's a complete service here at 'zuga - Nurse Nataski tending to a pre-trip injury.

Smoke pours from the chimney of the banya and Old Vova gathers birch as I type, so aching bodies can sweat it out this evening.

Happy with their gravadlax

A chat with Toby at Pana this morning revealed that yesterday produced sixteen fish for their team and Charlie T who’s unusually not here this week has sent statistics that tell us todays’ average catch at Pana since 1992 is 74.5 fish….. I’m expecting big news tomorrow lad!

Retired for the day

Kitza produced nine fish yesterday. Tough going, but that's fish all round.


Oli Shuldham - responsible for yesterdays' entry as well...