Fishing

To create a truly unique fishing conditions for our guests, we have made an unprecedented decision to halve the number of fishermen, which has undoubtedly led to a qualitative change in catches per rod. Since 2016, Varzina River Club has hosted not 12 as previously, but only 6 guests per week. Also to improve the quality of fishing and taking into account that the pools on Varzina are quite local and could be fished over by one fisherman during the day, fishing will be carried out on the principle of «one fish/one guide/one bit». That is, each fisherman in the group not only has his own personal guide, but also his own personal fishing area, which does not need to be shared with anyone else.

Every day, from Sunday to Friday, after breakfast, fishermen with their guides are delivered by our helicopter to the places of fishing, according to the lot cast on the day of arrival. Fishing begins at 9 a.m. and lasts with a break for lunch until 7 p.m. After arriving at the camp and dinner, everyone has the opportunity to go down to home pools for evening fishing, accompanied by their guide. This often yields quite tangible results, especially if the evening time coincides with the sea tides. After all, the camp is located right on the upper border of the tidal zone, on the first rapids from the sea, where the salmon stops.

The run of fresh salmon into Varzina usually begins in late May - early June. Nature makes its own adjustments, but at the start of our season, fish is almost always in the river. On average, in a week of high season, about a hundred salmon per group are caught and released. The salmon in June is quite large, so  each guest has a real chance of catching a trophy of about 10 kilos. And the lucky ones get a bigger fish every year, well over a meter long. The absolute record of Varzina described is Sir Seton's salmon weighing 59.5lbs (approximately 30 kg).

The Varzina river is full-flowing, fast and very rapid. The height difference reaches 200 meters by less than 25 kilometers. The river begins its run north, flowing from Enozero, which, in turn, is one of the largest accumulators of water on the Kola Peninsula. This circumstance leads to the fact that when the water temperature in hot years in neighboring rivers reaches + 20C, Varzina hardly heats up to +16C.

The salmon section of the river is characterized by a transition from an open, almost flat tundra to fairly high hills, forming in one place a deep canyon strongly gripping Varzina. In the lower reaches, the river, on the contrary, spills, forming a wide delta. There, from the left bank, its largest tributary Penka flows into Varzina. Our camp is located here. This is about 4 kilometers from the Barents Sea, where the first salmon parking spots are located, where the fish has not yet cleared of sea lice in the spring and is still being chased by seals.

Although the salmon section of the river occupies at least three-quarters of its length, fresh fish in June, early July rarely cross the Varzina waterfall, which rattles about ten kilometers above the camp. So productive fishing is concentrated on this segment. The pools in this lower third of the river are clearly outlined, local and delimited by long turbulent rapids. At about half of the bits we use both shores for fishing. There are boats on the needed pools. The Penka river, on which you can fish only by visiting our main camp, stands out at the beginning of the season. The tributary of Varzina, which flows already in the tidal zone, is practically an independent river. It is smaller than Varzina, correspondingly faster to warm up, so often the first «fresh» salmon of the season is caught in the waters of Penka. Despite the size of the river, the size of the fish in the tributary is very decent.

Fishing in Varzina and Penka is not easy, but given the size of the trophies and the nature of the river, the landing of large salmon leaves usually indelible impression in the soul of a fly fisherman!