I took over the baby sitting job in the afternoon so Sayuri could go try her luck. Even Mike joined me to alleviate my burden nursing Misa.

Thanks to that, she did receive her first contact with a salmon, but the hook failed to stay on. She received some consolation prizes - a small trout and a few greyling.

What we did not know back then was the fact this year 2016 was indeed a very bad year. Actually, the worst year of the river:s history. The graph shows the catch result of Roxtons in the premiere beat. This does not represent the condition of the entire river but the tendency must be shared.

Earlier ice break and arrival of summer may have caused some impact. We can only hope this was a one off odd year not a conditnuing trend for the future.

The lodge was not built with high standard but the food was plentiful and quite tasty. In fact, we came to like this place better as the days went by.

Evening dinner was to become a table discussion, reviewing the day past, planning for the day next.

The second stage of our fishing began. Vasily, the owner of the guesthouse ferried us in his boat to the public fishing beat some 2miles upstream from the Varzuga village.

Anyhow we did not know such back then. And we could only do our best even if we had known it!

The low water was not really a favorable factor but it did give us freedom of wading almost everywhere. The sunny warm weather gave us humans creature comfort if not for the salmon. We just had to keep casting patiently, hoping the fly will be drifting correctly at that critical moment when it comes!

At 6pm, Vasily came to boat us back.

A peaceful walk back to the lodge on a hill - if only there had not been those battalion of mosquitoes!!

Meanwhile Mike, who was fishing a narrower side channelt on the right side of the bank, also managed to nail down his first Varzuga salmon.

The boat dropped us on a big gravel bar, some 100meters wide, 300meters long. It was a sort of an island in the middle of the river. We were left there whole day to fish on either side of the island, till the boat come again to pick us up in the evening.

The river glided smoothly - too smoothly for my liking and unlike the premier beat at Sobachy Porog, there were not many obvious pools or rocks that would hold fish.

The next lodge we moved into belonged to a different category. Particularly the bathroom was of a very primitive standard. But noting the cost, about 120euro per person per day, less than half of the Sobachy Porog, one cannot complain.

As we soon realized, this one in fact was a cats house. No less than 4 cats were roaming about keeping our company at all times. Even at 2am the cats are on night watch duty outside the window - though the sky is blue the whole night.

Meanwhile, Sayuri and Misa were also faring better - better than the previous days when they had to breathe in the crowds of mosquitoes - because here on this island with some distance from the bush, there were considerably less of those vampires.

The only one good thing was the very few number of fishermen. We could have the gravel bar to ourselves, studying the entire length of the river intensively. After some hours of initial exploration, we managed to find a few likely spots.

I focused on one of the pool and began covering it inch by inch. And soon enough, my effort was rewarded. A handsome male fish of 68cm.