Fly Fishing Varzina River, Russia 2012 review

The Varzina river is located on the North Kola Peninsula and is renown for its 30lb plus atlantic salmon. Each year we send a group of intrepid anglers to the Varzina in search of the monsters. The Varzina helicopter fly out program is for those anglers in search of a true wilderness experience. The fishing in 2012 has been quite slow compared with previous years but 2 of our clients did join the       30 lber club this season. This club is unique to Varzina and entitles the angler to a 40% discount on a future return trip to the river. Jonathan Franklin was once such lucky angler in 2012. He had had a very tough week not managing to land a fish on the first 5 days of the trip then it all came together on the last with a fish of 38lb. His story below is well worth the read.....

Varzina June 2012.

Title: ONE FISH or CROCODILUS  VARZINII.

   On the lip of Big Falls pool Varzina Russia on my last day with the river flow shoving at my legs I am remembering my wife’s text message 6 days before as we clambered into the helicopter in Murmansk, ‘May the Fush be with you’ I read. How could I tell her now that I had caught nothing, NOTHING not even after at least 3,500 casts. She would cry from disappointment far more than me.

   On the left three rocks in a line, on the right one big rock and a strong stream between towards those steep noisy rapids. You know the place, of course you do. I am not thinking of much as my Snelda tube swings into the middle of the run a good forty metres out and dead straight from the tip of my rod, except how was I to tell her especially as this particular Snelda she had blessed for me. I look up at the sky. Will it rain yet again and will Anton have to puff and puff to get the lunch fire going? Damn ithere’s another rock. Yes, I’m rather good at catching rocks. But No. This one moves. Stupid rock as Anton would say but this one wrenches and runs away, very odd for a rock, hissing my reel and slicing my line white through the surface towards that big rock barely 40 metres from the rapids. My new Hardy Marksman 2 T Series doubles like an exaggerated question mark.

   Anton runs towards me, ‘Move him back away from the rock,’ he shouts. Four metres from the rock with 80 metres of line out a dolphin erupts out of the stream,somersaults sideways and backwards crashing shoots of spray upwards and a tidalwave sideways. For a moment I don’t believe that this dolphin has anything to do with me but it is silver not black and Anton breathes ‘Yeagh’. The handle of my reel spins,jabbing painfully against my forefinger.

   My heart beats again.

   Anton slips his right arm under my left and with his free hand cranks the brake on my reel. ‘Not too much to begin with,’ he insists, ‘harder soon but now move back, back.’ He half lifts me half drags me onto the bank. The line is slack – Gone gone, Oh God how dare you. But a Polaris missile angles upwards with showers of water streaming behind like rocket propellant. I see Crocodilus Varzinii. Over to the other side, up the other side, down towards the rapids, my backing rushes into the eyes of my rod. Into the air again a hundred metres away, smack. From Anton, ‘Hold, Hold.’ I do.

   My son Tommy and my brother in law Will are close behind me. I hear ‘20lbs? – No 30, No 40.’

   Half an hour later and my left arm aching a 114cm/ 38lb cock salmon slaps its spade size tail in the net. It’s an over wintered dark coloured Osenka. Wow! Anton and I hug. I gasp.

   To you who go down to try and try again to seek Crocodilus Varzinii, ‘May the Fush be with you’.  

J. Franklin, UK