Wednesday 29 May 2019

Getting ahead

My apologies for no blog yesterday.   I normally spend a month up here, leaving when Lower Varzuga has finished for the season but this year, I am leaving a week early and as a result, I have been trying to set things up so that Jack does not have too much extra to do on top of being the camp manager at Middle, which in itself is a very busy job.

Paul C with a deep fish from Middle
As a result, meetings in the village and rather too much time on the helicopter meant I did not get back much before we were due to fly to Kitza for the mid-week changeover.  What a 48 hours it has been!

One of our bear dogs cooling off
The team we flew over to Kitza had a fabulous 3 days at Lower and the 10 rods finished with 319 fish.  Brendan G certainly set the pace by landing 81 of those which shows what the river can produce but not everyone would want to or be able to put in the hours that he did.  The other members of the team fished hard but relaxed equally hard and we had a lot of fun.

Jason S on Heli at Lower
At Pana things are developing just as we would hope.  They have now landed 64 fish with some really chunky fish in amongst them.  JT, who had fished all over the world and really knows his stuff, played a fish that he thought was well over 20lbs for 25 minutes yesterday only for the hook to break.  Ponzoi is their most productive beat which is as we would expect but they are beginning to see fish showing everywhere.

 A picnic in the sun 
At Middle the 12 rods have now landed 436 fish for their three days.  I went up to see them on Monday night and there was a very good atmosphere in the lodge.  One of the rods turned quiz master for the night and one of the questions was “how many fish have we, as a group of 12, landed at Middle Varzuga over the past 9 seasons?”  An answer of over 6,000 fish was pretty astonishing and gave us all cause to reflect on the superb fishing they have had over the years.

Alan S
The 6 rods we picked up at Kitza were all in great spirits and had clearly enjoyed their time in the beautiful surroundings over there.  It has now dropped to a point where all of the pools are clearly defined and it is looking stunning.  A total of 140 fish for the 3 days made for a very happy team and we look forward to seeing how they get on with us at Lower.

Lawrence R up at Middle
For those of you coming out on Saturday I would suggest that you forget all about the heavy stuff as we are now really on intermediate tips with unweighted tubes or flies around size 6-8.  The water temperature is now around 9 degrees and when the sun comes out it really does feel quite warm.  It has been a while since we had “normal” spring weather at the start of the season and it is good to see the river doing what we would expect it to.

Charlie White