Yesterday was a tale of two halves with Middle starting well but Lower was a struggle.
It really reminded me of 2014 when we had a huge river for the first week of the season as a result of high temperatures. Pretty much all of the snow and ice has now gone and the tundra water is starting to be released into the river with all of the feeder streams really pumping water in.
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| Andrew T |
Middle Varzuga is above a lot of those streams - particularly a smaller tributary called Sergo which can be very dirty when it starts to run - and as a result, in these conditions, they have much cleaner water to fish.
They landed 35 for the day which is more than a solid start. Gareth C landed 5 from Clarks (a classic high water pool) whilst Neville A landed 4 on his first day on a Russian river. Andrew T was the star of the day though landing 9 from Generator and Party - he was also clearly the only man to take a camera with him!
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| In the withies |
At Lower, Jonathan B saved our blank by landing 1 whilst we also lost a couple of others. I would tell you where he caught it but frankly there is not a definable beat at the moment and it is just a question of trying to find places to get in where we can wade for a bit. Fishing from boats is the obvious answer but the current is too strong to risk a decent anchor hold so we can’t quite do that at the moment either.
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| One from Generator |
The good news is that it is dropping very quickly. It dropped around 8 inches last night which is a vast amount of water off it given how wide it currently is. As it drops it will clear and the beat will open up which will give us a decent chance of covering the fish that are obviously running through here.
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| Heading out this morning - still very high |
2014 was our record season in 26 years of operating up here and so we hope that the replication of the first couple of days will continue through the next 6 weeks.
Charlie White
