salmonjunky
New member
It was another week of great friends, interesting weather and good sized salmon here on the north coast! Although we started out again with bright sunny skies and very warm temperatures of 25+ degrees C, by early week there was thunder and lightning followed by heavy rains and the odd snow flurry. We woke up on Tuesday morning to near freezing temperatures and the rivers were slowly starting to rise - going from 23 to 27cm during the day on the home pool scale. Thankfully everything seem to come just right on the Wednesday with the boys landing 18 salmon in addition to losing about the same number in some epic battles - knees and egos were bruised - hooks straightened - a rod and several lines snapped! While the rivers temps were now back down to a more seasonable 10.8 C, bright sun and breezy cool winds made the going a bit more challenging to finish off the week.
For the first few days the salmon seemed to be running straight through the lower beats only to possibly pause briefly in the home pool before we really had a chance of finding them again with long tailed sea lice on the upper beats near the falls. Besides that perfect cloudy Wednesday when we found them everywhere on the Litza, most of the salmon were running through and are now starting to stack up from the Falls pool down.
Snealdas and SunRays seemed to be the answer lately with David enticing back to back 25 and 27 pounders on his hitch SR up at the Kharlovka falls. Meanwhile his partner Richard started the week out finding a few nice salmon a day including a couple of beautiful 21 and 22 pounders on his small green butts and samurais.
Thankfully Peter and Guthrie were able to snap a few great photos of their bright fresh mid sized salmon.
Not surprisingly, Sugai (who has been coming to the Kharlovka for the last 19 years) and Ueli were very relaxed and productive this past week as they will both be carrying on again for a second week. These two characters seemed to be on auto pilot enjoying everything from a couple of salmon a day including sharing a brace of bright fresh 23 pounders - to the hot saunas that were followed by a freezing cold barrel of fresh arctic water to reserving nightly massages with Svetlana our professional camp masseuse.
And then there was Simon and Will who what can you say - never really made it to bed before 00:?? and still managed to catch 12 salmon on the week including a sweet pair of 18 pounders and 25 pounders for Si with his snealda that one memorable day up at the Litza falls.
It was also reported that our good friend Karl had 'to work very hard for his 4 salmon up to 18 pounds on the middle Litza. And even though his partner Mark found the only salmon that one crazy day on the Litza, we decided to crank up the helicopter again and fly them up to the Kharlovka falls for a fat 25 pounder after dinner.
And last but not least, Richard came bouncing up the stairs on the final day with wonderful news - along with a couple of good photos of his new personal best 111cm - 36 pound sea liced Litza salmon to cap off a lovely week.
Considering all great company and crazy conditions, we were all quite pleased were our result of 69 salmon on the week. While we expect to lose a few here and there, it can honestly be said that we never saw half the fish that took our SunRays last week.
They are forecasting heavy rains again for tomorrow followed by a perfect week of cloudy mild temperatures.
We are all looking forward to what will certainly happen next!
Justin
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