Charlie White reports on the penultimate week of the Varzuga season.

Into the final week of the season but the excellent fishing continues...

Rather frighteningly we are now in our final week of the season and as I mentioned last week it will be a great shame to leave the river on Friday but at least we should finish the season with a bang.

Last week saw excellent fishing across the camps and although it is fair to say that in past years we have put more fish in the book, the relative decrease in numbers was more than made up for by the increase in the average size of the fish. It is also important to keep a sense of perspective when talking about fish numbers on the Varzuga!

Lower Varzuga has now closed and the final week of the season fished well without quite hitting the heights of the previous weeks. The first group, led by Ralph Congreve had 84 in their three days, which to seven rods was excellent and they followed this up with 66 fish at Kitza. The opposite group, led by Lawrence Dalgleish and starting at Kitza had 131 fish for their three days which was then followed by 57 fish being taken at Lower.

The first three days of this week at Kitza have seen the team of five rods (sadly depleted from eight rods at the 11th hour) take 82 and it is noticeable that the fish are well above camp now and all fish are being caught on a floating line.

The entries into the Middle Varzuga catch records showed no signs of abating during last week and the team of 12 rods, some very experienced and some new to the beat, landed 546 fish including a superb 22lb male fish landed by Sinclair Stewart. Over the first three days of this week the nine rods, all new to the beat bar one, have netted 95 fish with some good fish being lost on top of that. Again, the river is dropping and floating lines are the norm with skated flies being very effective.

Pana saw the very experienced team of seven rods take 303 fish last week and whilst we have seen this week produce more in terms of numbers there was a general feeling amongst the rods that the combination of bigger fish and having to work slightly harder for them led to a greater satisfaction overall. The first half of the current week has produced 185 fish to the 10 rods which rather goes to show the effects of the late break as the fish are still running hard into the lower Pana stretches and filling up the pools throughout the beat.

As we come to the end of the season it is great to look back through the records to see the number of rods who have landed their first ever fish, personal scores being bettered and to note that many rods have landed their biggest salmon throughout the season and across the camps. The last Friday of the season is always a sad one but a quick flick through the catch records generally lightens the mood!