We had another fantastic week here on the northern rivers with mostly sunny skies and more impressive numbers of bright, fresh summer salmon up into the 20 pound class.
Our Austrian friend Franz certainly took the prize for eating the most crabs and landing the largest fish of the week at 31 pounds but we would particularly like to congratulate young Cornelius who is only 13 (along with his proud father Ulrik for introducing his young son to the big time) for breaking his personal best seven times during the week that included 20, 25 and 28 pounders – with the big one taking him for a run through the rapids into the Mirror Pool.
There were six national flags flying at the camp last week: Britain, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Russia to welcome our latest team back to the Kharlovka for Mikael Frodin’s summer masterclass. On behalf of the whole group, we would like to thank our great friend for entertaining and enlightening us through the week with his professional presentations and slideshows. These valuable lessons, which were obviously paying off, were followed up by joining a different group on the beat every day. In addition to going over the basics, such as casting, speed, depth and important knots, we also reviewed the day’s video clips, which exposed what we ‘thought’ we were doing right but in fact were not!
The Arctic weather is always a major factor when it comes to salmon fishing for the big one in low summer rivers. Last week started out again with brilliant bright blue skies and warm temps to 20C but by Tuesday afternoon the winds suddenly shifted, pulling in a blanket of fog from the north and the temperature plummeted back down into single digits. It wasn’t for long though as the skies opened back up for the remainder of the week, accompanied by some of the warmest temperatures of the year; in fact it was so pleasant that we decided to make the best of it one fine evening with picnic down by the Home Pool.
While we would have preferred a bit more cloud about, Sven and Mawill, who have fished around, did consistently well teaming up for 45 salmon that included multiple 20 pounders and a 30 pounder for Mawill in addition to a new 23 pound PB for Sven.
Special mention also goes out to the other father and son team of Allan and Rasmus for sharing a memorable 35 salmon on the week. Like Ulrik, Allan was also proud of his son for landing a nice 22 pounder which equalled his son’s PB from the previous time around.
Our good Austrian friends Franz, Robert and Manfred also did splendidly well landing nearly 60 salmon between them that included a 31 pounder for Franz, several up to 20 for Robert along with many more big smiles for them all.
We would also like to thank our good friend Nick who was with us earlier this spring for returning again for round two under more mild conditions to land another pleasing 24 salmon up to 27.5 pounds. See you again next year!
In fact, honourable mention goes out to all the boys and also to that charming lady Meta, for picking up a few new tricks from Mikael along with a whole lot of salmon. Fishing every level of the water with everything from small flies to hitched sun rays to MF’s deadly little tubes, we had a tremendous time landing a total of 260 salmon on the week.
The rivers are still flowing nicely with a temp of 14C along with a current level of 13cm on the Home Pool scale. With cooling temperatures, dark cloudy skies and the sound of distant thunder on the horizon – along with plenty of bright silver splashing about – we are looking forward to another exciting week here on the mighty Kharlovka.
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