Riverside Surveys’ Kolamap: a useful work of art with 31 rivers and tributaries on the peninsula listed.
Happy returns: an NFC July-caught salmon goes back.
It’s the week of the 2012 season when July will turn to August and it’s a week when the beats of the Norwegian Flyfishers Club rotation fishery should be heaving with salmon of all sizes. Catches range from three to eight fish in a week and the fish run big, into the 30s of pounds. Sixty fish were caught in this week by NFC rods in 2010, for instance.
With the benefit of a special pricing deal put together with Manfred Raguse, chairman of the NFC, I am building a small group of UK rods to go out and fish the week July 29-August 5. Please speak to me about these very special rates on a week that already benefits from slipping out of the earlier ‘peak weeks’ category. You may be surprised how affordable the fishing and accommodation package is. I will also help with booking flights if required, and hire car for the week. In the first instance, you need to be free for those dates, however!
Jess James and Losha at Varzuga’s Bearlets in a previous season
It’s a brand-new 2012 season and the Kola’s Varzuga continues to amaze although I’ll stick my neck out and say that a bumper week this week (after incredibly high ice-melt water last week) was always on the cards.
Nevertheless, yesterday one of the rods at Middle Varzuga camp caught 62 salmon – in a day.
To his own rod. In one day. Sixty-two salmon.
That’s only four short of Phil Janaway’s world record of 66 salmon Continue reading
Ross Macdonald is one of Scotland’s finest fly-tyers. I have caught a few salmon on his flies and they are absolutely deadly. Now the inventor of the incomparable Park Shrimp has a new website which is smart, artistic and best of all gives you the chance to order some extra special flies for this season for when the going gets tough. Enjoy!
Daniel Stephan unhooks an August fish caught by one of the Norwegian Flyfishers Club (NFC) guides on the lower, E beats of Norway’s River Gaula.
There are still places for rods to fish the NFC‘s fabulous fly-fishing water on the world-famous River Gaula this season. Week 31 (July 29 to Aug 5) and August 19 to the season’s end on August 31st have spaces for you – or you and a friend – to fish on Manfred Raguse’s famous rotation fishery. Week 31 especially offers the chance to build up a party of UK rods – contact me on henry.giles01@yahoo.com for further details and 2012 prices and I can help organise all aspects of your trip.
Normally when I think of a big, dirty, flooded river I think of Dumfries and Galloway’s finest: the River Nith after the equinoxial gales in October. But you can get spring floods too, and on the Varzuga.
Here’s my latest from Fish and Fly. Enjoy, although that’s not quite the right word.
Just remember, however, that difficult is a relative term. After all 70 salmon in a day (by 8 rods fishing Middle Varzuga on Tuesday) is pretty good going. Even when on Wednesday their total fell to 25, well 3 fish a rod for a day’s fishing is great sport by any standards.
Just not by the Varzuga’s.
Gosh it looks wintry out in the Lower and Middle camps as reported by Christopher Robinson today on the Varzuga blog. The first rods of the season arrived yesterday amid what looks like a snow storm. They bravely tried to fish at Middle but were knocked back by northerly gales. Those log lodges with open wood fires are lovely places to be snow-bound though!
