Those Russian helicopters are far too dangerous and it’s an accident waiting to happen, they said. It’s way too much money for what you get, they said. There are so many salmon that they just commit suicide and dive on your fly, they said. It’s all just too easy, they said. The fish are only grilse anyway and you don’t get a shot at a decent salmon, they said. You won’t like it. They said.

My first view of the Middle Varzuga was through the lens of a snowstorm as the helicopter approached. This year, Spring had actually come early to the Kola Peninsula; the ice was almost gone and the river was running low, but then a sudden cold front had blown in and temperatures had plummeted leaving the air at a chilly 2 degrees centigrade. It didn’t look good to a newbie like me but then what did I know.

I’d come out to Russia at the suggestion of my new fishing buddy, Paul, and he was very keen that the trip should go well for me. Fishermen understand the difference between solitude and loneliness so choosing a fishing buddy is not done lightly. Paul and I had actually known each other for getting on 14 years before we decided to go on a test trip. It was an overnighter on the Tweed and we rubbed along well enough to plan a week-long trip out to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, hunting Striped marlin. That week turned out to be a hoot; we caught 10 marlin each day we went out for them and we had a ball onshore too. So we both knew that, whatever the Fishing Gods dictated, we’d have a Riot in Russia. The other reason I was there was that my usual beat on the Spey at Tulchan had, for reasons they never deigned to explain to me, decided that I no longer met their high standards of a paying client and gave all my regular fishing away to other people. It had only taken them 20 years to suss me out – my bad.

I won’t bore you with the details of the catch statistics and topography of the Middle Varzuga, or indeed the Varzuga system itself, simply because there is tons of stuff freely available online. What I would say, however, is that when you see the river for the first time you’re likely to be intimidated. It’s big. I stood on the bank and looked at it that first night and wondered “Where on earth will the fish be in all of THAT?” Interestingly, not too many salmon were showing which, again, suggested the task of locating them could be even harder. However I was secure in the knowledge that in the preceding weeks the anglers had been getting over 600 fish on this section alone so there had to at least be some salmon still out there.

There are certain truisms about salmon fishing that you have to understand before we go any further. First you have to go to the right place, you have to go at the right time and you have to do the right things: but then that goes for all fishing and a lot of other things in life besides. Second, the main ingredient of successful salmon fishing is, unsurprisingly, salmon, and lots of them. Third and last, it’s only when there are lots of salmon that you can spot the really good fishermen. When salmon are as scarce as they are in most Scottish rivers these days, the process is reduced to nothing more than a lottery and I have seen some very inept fishermen catch as many as experts in their week simply because the ghillie stuck them in at exactly the right place at exactly the right time just to make sure he got his tip. And who can blame him for that.

On a trip like this therefore you get to find out who is The Big Dawg and that’s something that can push some folks over the edge. Most of the other rods will be pretty high flyers, simply because it takes a fair bit of change to get to somewhere like this. These are competitive people by nature and it only takes one trying to outscore everyone else to create mayhem in the fishing hut. Thankfully in this week we had a bunch of great guys who were intent only on beating their own personal standards and targets. Harmony and general good humour was therefore preserved. Of course, get any twelve guys together mixed liberally with industrial quantities of alcohol and a fair bit of politically incorrect humour, personally offensive banter and outrageous profanity is inevitable. It sort of goes with the territory and it would be a shame to waste such a God-given opportunity. However, thankfully, what happens in camp stays in camp, even if some of us may have to detox and decompress at the end of it all, wives tut-tutting at our inappropriate turns of phrase for a few weeks thereafter.

The Middle Varzuga camp is run by Roxtons and, speaking as someone who prefers to organise everything himself, I have to say that I was more than a little impressed by their professionalism and sheer enthusiasm for the job. Their attention to detail throughout was immaculate. The camp manager, Ed Ghaui, is a Tanzanian who fishes like a maniac, wades the entire river (bank to bank) as though he is splashing through puddles and casts a line out to the horizon. He was able to tell everyone how to fish wherever they went on the 19 mile stretch. When he isn’t doing this he is big game fishing off Lamu Island in Africa and when he isn’t doing that he guides safaris in Tanzania, Kenya and Botswana. He is also a gifted artist and has movie-star looks. At a mere twenty-seven years old he is, in fact, the kind of young man that gentlemen of a certain age who are generally required to wear britches with loose fitting waistbands could be jealous of to the point of irrational dislike. But with Ed that is impossible: he’s just such an affable and genuinely decent bloke. He is backed up by Polly, the camp cook, who made everyone three excellent, hearty meals per day out of whatever seemed to be at hand.

The camp is situated on a large island in the river with the home pools of Bear and Generator to left and right. The Generator pool could just be the most productive Atlantic salmon fishery in the world. Each of the little cabins is comfortable and clean and accommodates two anglers with their own bedroom. There is also a bathroom and separate shower room. The only flaw is the hot water system which swings from freezing to scalding, sometimes both simultaneously, during a shower.

Roxtons employ what I consider to be an excellent policy: they don’t hire professional guides (who would in the main be non-Russian) but choose to involve the nearby town of Varzuga in the operation by hiring local men to man the boats and get the rods out on the water. Most of these guys have very poor English and none of them, as far as I could tell, fished at all. They were therefore simply water-taxis who would net fish and remove hooks, often with limited grace and skill. Their nightly vodka intake invariably left them dozing on the bank on the sunnier days, but it is still a great policy as it generates at least some contact between the camp and the town as well as injecting much needed cash directly into what has to be a hard place to live. Paul and I were lucky enough to be taken downriver to the Varzuga township by Misha, our Russian Bear of a guide, one evening. We passed serried ranks of Russian anglers throwing Tobys and Rapalas towards us as we neared the town itself and, if I’m honest, they didn’t exactly look terrifically pleased to see us on their river. It felt a bit like the kind of reaction that the locals on the Grantown Association Water have to the toffs from the private beats of the lower Spey when they come to town. However at least Roxtons are making an attempt to break barriers down and that is a definite positive in my book.

As we set off on our first morning into the snow flurries and biting, icy wind I was a tad nervous. The boat ride was fast and there were lots of rocks. If we hit one and went in, I wasn’t entirely confident we’d be coming out again. Big Misha proved a reliable navigator though and knew every channel. It took about 20 minutes to get to our designated beat. I looked at the water in Scott’s pool for quite a while before deciding that you can only fish the water in front of you, not the entire river. It was cold, difficult, physically demanding fishing. You have to be able to throw a long line or wade deeply in this river. If you can do both you will be doubly rewarded. I, like Paul, hate deep wading, especially when you can’t see the bottom as was the case for most of the week, so we concentrated on throwing as long a line as possible in hip deep water. Cast less than 30 yards and you will struggle to catch anything without getting out there in the river. I am lucky enough to be able to do 35-40; 45 yards at a push. Yet that took me less than 20% of the way across the flow, even with the square cast that you have to make in order to work the fly quickly enough to tempt these highly aggressive Russian salmon.

At a cast every 2 minutes or so for up to 12 hours a day you begin to wonder how many calories you are expending. Even eating and drinking everything I wanted to in huge quantities I didn’t gain an ounce on this holiday. Call that an unexpected bonus for all the effort you will put in. Put it this way; you’re going to hurt a lot by your third day and you will soon discover that you have to work very hard for every salmon that you catch. All the fish go back alive unless they are bleeding profusely and barbless hooks are mandatory. Most of my fish threw the hook as soon as the tension was off the line i.e. when they were in the net, so unhooking was generally a formality for Misha.