Our group for last week included two old friends from Iceland – Gretar and Hilli, along with Cedo from Slovenia, Graeme from Scotland, Mark from England and nine new French friends – with a big ‘merci beaucoup’ to Piam the group leader.
We started on Saturday with bright skies and warm air and water temperatures of 15.4C. These conditions persisted for the first half of the week and by Wednesday the water temperature had reached 16.8C and the water levels dropped away steadily to zero on our Home Pool scale.
Then it was all change as it got much colder on Thursday with a strong northerly wind which didn’t help casting or fly presentation. As a consequence of the conditions the rest of the week was quite challenging, especially for our French team as most of them were fishing for salmon on the fly for the first time.
Hilli opened our big fish list for the week with a 28-pounder caught on Litza on Monday. Together with Gretar the pair did consistently well and managed to land 23 salmon, including memorable 18 and 20 pouders for Gretar and 16 and 24 pounders for Hilli.
The UK pairing of Mark and Graeme were very determined and woke up at six almost every day to fish Home Pool. They did a great job and landed 20 salmon between them, including a 16 pounder to Mark and couple of fresh 15 pounders for Graeme. These guys had a great time in the camp and on the river with their guide Volodya, they enjoyed the helicopter rides and promised us all that we would see them again next year.
There were lots of personal bests caught on the week – we were pleased to congratulate Cedo with a 14 pounder from Litza Falls, There was a 15 pounder from Kharlovka Golden Pool for Domimique, Phillippe had a 17 pounder from Litza Tent Pool, Gilles an 18 with from lower Litza and Gerard a 20 pounder from Kharlovka Falls caught on Friday.
With the shallow, quiet water fishing last week was all about the speed of fly. We used small and micro flies such as: Wiilie Gun and Cascade but the most deadly one was Frederic‘s ‘secret’ fly called Bonya – with a help with this small fly Frederic managed to beat his personal best twice – at first with a bright, fresh 19 pounder on Kharlovka Home Pool, and then with a huge 30 pounder from Litza Flat Stone – the biggest fish of a tough weekbecame the biggest fish of the week – He promised to came back and get a bigger one next year!
Although the conditions were challenging last week our team managed to land 144 salmon by Friday and we are all excited and ready to welcome our new group for next week – the youth program on Kharlovka.
We will tell you all about it next week!
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