We arrived at the Sabacchi camp without incident, unless you count the usual delay caused by Russian Customs - this time they wanted everyones rod cases opened and insisted on knowing the value of all our rods!

Varzuga was higher than I have ever seen it in 12 years, so high in fact that finding places to fish from was not easy and a lot of fish were lost in the willows under the water near the edge. A late Icemelt had combined with heavy rain a few days earlier to lift the river to massive proportions.

Nevertheless our party managed 27 on the first day, 40 on the second and 66 on the third. Most of the fish were found in the small number of slacker stretches behind bear island and in Moscoy, but a lot of these were Ice fish and the fresher fish didn`t really start to arrive in any numbers until our last day before we moved to the Kitsa.



Sadly the Kitsa which is slower to warm and drop was virtually unfishable - the party there in the first half of the week had caught nothing.



Nevertheless as I have done before under these conditions, when the fresh fish simply haven`t come in yet, I suggested we concentrated higher up river looking for the Ice fish.

I have always believed that there are two classes of fish that run these Russian rivers. The Ice fish, which must either come in under the ice, or could possibly even be autumn fish held in a state of suspended animation until the water warms in the spring, but in anycase are far from fresh as you can see from this fish netted by head guide Yura...



And the tide-bright spring fish, which come through in droves once the temperature of the river equals or betters that of the sea.

With a water temperature hovering around 37 degrees we were just not going to get many of the latter. But we did manage to pick up 14 of these fish plus numerous kelts and grayling, so it was far from a total disaster.

147 Salmon for 9 rods would be a very good week by any other rivers standards but for Varzuga and Kitsa this was dissapointing.

As we packed to leave the river was dropping to an ideal height and warming. The other beats were starting to return over 100 fish per day and it was just a case of we should have been there next next week!  But that`s fishing for you and those that are will have their day and good luck to them. Perhaps it`ll be our turn next time?

Our collective thanks to Michaelavitch and all the Russians and to Christopher and all the team at Roxtons for all their hard work. We are alrerady looking forward to going back next year.