salmonjunky
New member
Yes it is true, summer has definitely arrived to the northern tundra! Tall green grass now blankets the lush birch forests. The little brown birds can be heard singing and are returning to their nests with mouthfuls of caddis and mayflies. Even many of the flowers are already in full bloom. However despite the advanced summer conditions, blazing sun, and low water conditions, the big salmon continue to arrive.
Half of last week's jolly Kharlovka team was made up of old friends that have been fishing with us consistently for many years while the other half consisted of a bunch eager new faces who were just arriving for the first time to see what the big fuss was all about.
Due to a last minute cancelation, we wasted no time deploying our 11 rods across the beats of the Kharlovka and Litza rivers and quickly went to work. Unfortunately, the weather conditions were all over the place last week and some of the days were definitely better than others. We started off with an amazing amount of bright sun along with a strong chilly headwind coming off the sea. On Monday morning we certainly began the day well with most of the rods hooking salmon that would unfortunately never make it to the net and also having fun raising fish to hitched flies on the surface. Then despite there not being a cloud in the sky, the barometer started to mysteriously drop for the rest of the day resulting in only 3 salmon reaching the net. Tuesday afternoon the skies finally darkened and that evening we received our first downpour of the season. Heavy rains and strong winds blowing up to 75 km/hr continued through lunchtime the follow day driving most of the boys early back to shelter. Through the next day the Kharlovka river rose from a level of 10cm on the home pool scale up to 20cm. After the storm cleared, the bright sun instantly reappeared eventually bringing the temperature up to 30 degrees in the shade on the final day. We finished the week basically where we started out with a water level of 16 cm and a perfect river temperature of 12.3 degrees.
It certainly wasn't all bad news through as we did manage to land another 5 great salmon in the 30 pound class! While we did only add 53 salmon to the book last week, the good news was that 40% of them were over 20 pounds. They were also spread out nicely amongst the team resulting in several new personal bests and an memorable week for us all.
Simon had a great week, even though he has been coming to the mighty Kharlovka for the last 8 years
he managed to break his personal best twice with 29 and 31 pounders.
Richard and David have obviously learned a trick or two as well over their last decade or so on the Kharlovka managing to land 16 salmon on the week including a couple of 30 and 31 pounders.
Sasha came to the Kharlovka with the goal of getting a big salmon on video for his new "Passion for Salmon" film. Thankfully all our prayers were answered early on with a big bright 31 pounder that was landed just as the sun popped out on the lower Litza.
Hopefully the weather will settle down a little bit for next week. We are also hopeful that there will be many more big salmon arriving on the incoming tides!
Justin
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