06/06/2006 - The Varzuga's season continues in fine style

The weather for the second part of last week was totally different to what we have seen so far with pouring rain and very strong winds. The river rose nine inches here at Lower and similar amounts throughout the system which is great news for the remainder of the season. The weather now is perfect for fishing with low clouds, little wind and no rain.

Last week saw wonderful fishing across all four camps despite the weather which would have caused most other rivers to be almost unfishable. Lower had 181 last week and so far has had 90 fish before the Kitza changeover on Monday night.

Kitza is fishing as well as we have ever seen it with 7 rods breaking the day record last week in landing over 100 fish. In total there were 342 fish landed from Kitza last week. This week has seen 106 fish to the ten rods so far.

Middle Varzuga is still flying along with the 12 rods last week finishing with 871 fish with some great salmon amongst that total including three 15 pounders to Neil French in one session on Party pool and Duncan Feather releasing a beautiful 16lb hen.

The first three days of this week have seen the 12 rods landing 272 with many rods new to the beat.

Pana is now fully in its stride with 179 salmon taken to the 8 rods for the first half of the week with more and more fresh fishing being seen every day. Three 15 pound fish were taken yesterday and many others are in the teens to give excellent fishing. The two lucky rods last week finished with just under 140 fish for their week.

With the weather settling down and the water temperature around 9 degrees and air at around 11 degrees most people are fishing floating lines although in some deeper pools intermediate or sinking tips are working well. We have almost moved exclusively onto flies rather than tubes and the most productive sizes have been 6's and 8's but no doubt these will get smaller as the weather warms up.