13/06/2006 - Fishing still excellent as the season draws to a close

Tom McNeile reports that the Varzuga is still fishing superbly.

We are now halfway through our final week at Lower Varzuga and into the penultimate week of the season and whilst the weather remains very unpredictable the fishing has been excellent. The weather has been veering from still with bright sunshine to brief but very heavy showers which is no bad thing for the river but with an occasionally strong upstream wind it has made fishing quite hard at times.

The fishing at Lower Varzuga is slowing down as, whilst fresh fish are still entering the system in droves, they are running very fast and it is difficult to intercept them before they have got through. Last week saw 155 fish taken to the two groups, each fishing half the week on Lower and the remainder of the week at Kitza as usual.

Kitza remains the higher river and it seems that as a result there is less of a sense of urgency about the fish as the river is fishing as well as we have known it. Last week the two groups landed 308 fish during their time on this beautiful river.

The first three days of this week have seen Kitza take 156 to the seven rods with Lower taking 25 to their six rods, all of whom are new to the river.

Middle Varzuga's water is holding up very well despite our early season fears and in the first half of this week our experienced Belgian team of 11 rods have so far had 214 fish to the bank.

Last week saw excellent fishing in this camp with the 12 rods landing 517 salmon with some lovely bigger fish being taken and James Macpherson added a couple of beautiful 16 pounders to the tally. It has been a feature of this season that nearly all rods have remarked on an increased average weight of the fish which can only be good news for the system as a whole.

Pana is proving to be this week's goldmine as the fish work their way up the system and the first half of this week has seen a truly staggering 416 fish being landed by the 8 rods. It should be noted that this group has been coming to the Pana for many years now and their knowledge of the river is a huge help but even so it does appear as though long standing records for this camp may well be broken.

Last week was another fine example of a returning team of rods using their experience to great effect as the 8 rods took 347 fish including many fish that fell to Jack Meredith's famous riffled hitch.

Fishing on all beats is onto floating lines with many salmon being taken on bombers and skated flies. In some of the faster areas of the pools we are using the occasional size 6 or even a size 4 though this is a rarity and not the norm as smaller flies are really coming into their own now and we expect this to remain the case.