At the Northeast of the Kola Peninsula the weather is still unstable. A few warm days turned to long periods of severe cold, non-stop rains and strong northern wind. The air temperature dropped to 3C, and sometimes the rain turned to the snow.
During the last week, the water was stable but cold at +6C, and the level dropped for 12cm.Although still remarkably high for this point in the season, the level has now fallen to a point at which many more of the lower pools are now able to offer considerably more fishing than was the case 2 weeks ago.
As a result of this, the week was very interesting. Almost all of the productive fishing is still concentrated below the first waterfall. Although some fish have undoubtedly run higher, there is still not a concentration up river and combined with heavy water on many upper pools this means that the most productive area, as at the previous week, was the lower stream of the river.
Primarily, we fished with the sinking lines and tubes. One of the anglers said that he has a dream to catch salmon with the hitched fly. Although the conditions were not ideal for that, his commitment was rewarded and he managed to make his dream come true catching several salmon with a hitched Sunray Shadow.
On another occasion, a double-hooked Green Highlander in a combination with the sinking line//brought us another wonderful 24 lbs salmon demonstrating that there was not just a single one strategy which could be used successfully.
The end of the week was most productive in spite of little noticeable change in conditions. During the last two days we caught 28 salmon, including a 26-lbs salmon caught with the Green Samurai, and 24-lbs salmon with the black-yellow tube. Both fishes were caught at the Home pool.
The Zolotaya river pleased us a lot finally starting its own season by consistently producing fish for the rods there. The salmon was caught very well both below and above the Russian pool.
Grateful for the photos to Valentin Pilipenko.
We thank all our guests for the real fishing spirit, fortitude, very interesting week and wonderful mood!
Nikolay and Simon
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