Charlie White reports on a great week in Russia.

With all camps firing the season continues as we would hope....

It seems amazing that we should already be into our penultimate week and with the late break this is a great shame as the river is fishing superbly at present and it will be very difficult to leave it on Friday week knowing it has so much more to offer.

Last week continued in much the same vein as the previous weeks with the important proviso being that the main run of fish has now hit Pana and the Kitza is now finally firing as we would expect.

The eight experienced rods at Pana had 267 for the week with Derek Mackintosh taking a beautiful 18lb fish. All rods commented on the increase in average size with many fish in the teens being taken through the week. With the water dropping throughout the week the Pana is now in full swing and the seven very experienced rods there at the moment have taken 178 fish in their first three days.

Middle Varzuga continued its extraordinary record and last week the 12 rods took 536 fish and with many rods being new to the beat this was an excellent effort. Special mention should go to Jim Fisher, who through skill and perseverance managed to land an extraordinary 119 fish in a week. The first three days of this week have seen much the same with the 12 rods accounting for 255 with some great fish being landed. Notable amongst these was Doug Unkles' 15lb fish taken from Bear pool on a single handed rod and Rodolphe Collinet taking 15 fish before lunch including a cracking 16lb hen.

Kitza has really started to take off now which just shows how late the break was. The first half of the week saw a new team taking 58 fish which they then followed by accounting for 140 from their three days at Lower Varzuga. John Hall, on his first salmon fishing trip, took a beautifully fresh and well mended fish of 18lbs from Heli pool as well as several others. There were many others who also took their first salmon on a fly during the week.

The team starting at Lower had 203 fish for their three days followed by a much more encouraging 173 fish at Kitza. Many of these rods chose to fish single handed rods and it was great to see the fights that they had on their eight weights. The seven rods who have been fishing at Lower for the past three days have taken 84 fish with some quite relaxed fishing hours whilst the team at Kitza have had 131 including a 17lb fish to Lawrence Dalgleish and a 16lber to Jim Daintith.

Summer has now properly arrived and all of the trees are in leaf. Floating lines are now the norm and a great deal of success is being had with a skated fly, so all looks set for a great finale and I look forward to seeing those of you flying this Friday at Stansted.