If you are reading this there is a chance that you might have thought about being a fishing guide. To those that fish it must appear the ultimate dream job. But is it? Mark Roxburgh spent a year guiding on the Ponoi in Russia and lifts the lid on being a guide.
How many times can you hit the snooze button in the morning and still have a shower, iron a shirt, scoff breakfast before the walkjog up the hill to work and still make it there on time? The answer is twice, but I always did it three times. “On time” became 9.10… the spreadsheets could wait that extra snooze. After all they weren’t going anywhere. Office life was breaking me - I don’t know how many salmon I’d caught sat in my blue chair gazing at another table of numbers in my partitioned workspace. More than the Scottish rivers were producing for me – that’s for sure. If I wasn’t dreaming of red-letter days I was checking river levels and planning my next trip. I worked to fish.
That was until earlier this year when I finally took the plunge and found myself on a plane to Russia. My world was about to be put on its head – I was en route to the remote River Ponoi on the Kola Peninsular where I was going to be “fishing to work” for the next five months on what turned out to be the hardest job I’ve ever had and ever likely to.
My first stop was the Russian city of Murmansk, which is exactly what you would expect from the main logistical player in the North West of Russia during world war II - a square soviet concrete city, surrounded by run down power stations, empty army bases and a vast expanse of arctic tundra. With darkness encompassing the city for six months of the year its little surprise the population is in decline. Thankfully however the runs of salmon in this part of the world are anything but, as I was soon to find out.
Three hours in a rusty old military helicopter and I was finally at Ryabaga camp, a place which had filled my dreams since I started swinging flies for Atlantic salmon. The camp itself was superb; with over 40 staff it felt more like a village than a fishing location. The people, a mixture of Russian, Argentinian, American, British and Irish where all very welcoming and despite three days travelling any doubts and nerves that had built up soon subsided as I settled into my new home. It's amazing how good food, warm showers and Russian vodka can help rationalise any thoughts of home and loved ones left behind.
I shadowed other guides for the first week and a half, giving me a chance to experience as much of the river as possible. My first day on the river was unforgettable. First impressions were overwhelming – it was much vaster than I had imagined, but we soon got into fish and it all began to make sense. After tailing a handful of fish, my guest handed me his rod while he watered the tundra. I didn’t take much persuading to have a cast and straight away hooked and landed a 6lb grilse. Unfortunately my second day didn’t go quite so well as I managed to snap a net and slice my hand open… I had a lot to learn! It really was sink or swim; especially when it came to the boat's jet engine. Needless to say a few minor mishaps and lost caps in my first week helped speed up the learning process and I used almost every evening practicing my driving (and fishing!) for the first couple of weeks.
Spring
Spring fishing on Ponoi is a numbers game - with cold water and plenty of active fish it was insane. The first two days guiding on my own say it all – I had over 50 fish in the boat. As the water warmed and the spring levels dropped the fish moved from the slower water close to the bank, into faster water around features and points. Fishing from the boat to a point on the bank which steam-lined the water into a classic riffle was incredibly productive. Hooking 10 fish of one point in the space of an hour was as good as it got for me as guide. Rocks in the middle of the river became brilliant holding spots, particularly just upstream of the feature, something I hadn’t really appreciated until I fished in Russia.
Although I considered myself a half decent salmon fisherman before I went to the Ponoi, I really had very little experience with actually hooking, landing and playing fish. I caught more fish in my first six weeks in Russia than I had my entire life back home and ultimately I suspect I would have gone a lifetime of fishing in Scotland without really knowing the best water to hold fish, how to hook a fish properly and how to play one. I now cringe to think of the time it used to take me to land a grilse back home. The fantastic thing about Ponoi is that you can be damn sure you are covering fish, and so experimenting becomes a useful tool. The fish aren’t taking because they didn’t like the size and depth of your fly or the speed you swung it at, not because they aren’t there in the first place. You learn the mistakes the hard way, and as a guide I saw plenty of them…
Striking fish was the worst offence; guests would do it time and time again. Some would strike the fish, lose it and then turn to me and tell me they didn’t strike! Some even claimed it was a better way to hook a salmon, ignoring their guide's advice and then stating they’d had an unlucky time at the end of the week when they hadn’t caught as many fish as others. I went for a casting lesson before I headed to the Motherland, worried the experienced guests of the Ponoi would show me up… I shouldn’t have bothered! You spend $15K on a fishing holiday and refuse to pay $100 for a casting lesson and another $100 on a half decent line that matches your rod. I use the $ sign here to highlight the main offender… Rant over! The Ponoi is a fantastic place to learn about salmon fishing, if you know how to cast, think about what your fly is doing in the water and listen to your guides, you cant go wrong.
For me, my best days on the river weren’t dictated by numbers but by how much craic there was in the boat. Unsurprisingly, friendly banter on the boat relaxed both guides and fisherman, and often led to the biggest hauls. There was nothing better than a good day on the river, followed by the banya (Russian sauna) a dip in one of the tributaries and then a couple of beers in the big tent before sharing stories of the one that got away over dinner. On the other hand, a bad day on the river and all of sudden the Kola Peninsular is a pretty lonely place, no way of escaping, or switching off, you are stuck there, a long way from friends, family and girlfriends. As a first year guide I felt an incredible amount of pressure from guests, guides and mechanics. Naturally everything I was doing was being watched, questioned and scrutinised. My worst critic, however, was myself. It was too easy to blame the guests or bad fishing conditions. If the guests weren’t catching fish it was my fault.
Fall
As the water warmed up and the river dropped, the fishing slowed and the guides managed some time away from camp before the “fall” season began. Despite returning to a low river, I had a spring in my step and had pushed aside the pressure felt earlier in the year. The nights drew in, and as the temperature dropped throughout the rest of the season, the Ponoi became a stunning display of pure autumn glory in fast forward. Long gone was the midnight sun that my body clock had finally adjusted too. The snooze button remained only for mornings following heavy nights on the vodka. I could finally really start enjoying myself.
The fall fishing was more about quality than quantity. The fast paced surface action was gone and losing count of your quarry no longer became a problem. The fish we did get though more than made up for it. The fresh run chrome fish were special. Also known as Osenkas’, these fish have to overwinter under the ice before spawning the following year. Needless to say they are built like no other salmon I have ever seen, with immense fat reserves. I had a fair few in the boat at close to twenty pounds, including a nice 17lb fish to my own rod. Each one making epic unpredictable runs into the backing, tail walking across the water as they did so. Pound for pound these fish had to be the strongest salmon I’ve ever caught.
Guiding became a lot less predictable than spring, with the fresh fish constantly on the move I found I always had to be a couple of steps ahead. Seeing running fish porpoising upstream of you meant only one thing… pull the anchor pronto and try and catch up with them! Playing these fish properly was a different ball game… The three biggest fish I’d seen all season were all lost. Quite often I’d have to throw the anchor and give chase to them. Incredible.
It was a true privilege to guide on such a magnificent river and experience this awesome specimen of Atlantic salmon. While I could continue telling tails of big fish lost, crashed boats, Ex US presidents, double hookups, annoying guests, and drinking Chateau Latour with Russian billionaires, it's probably best I leave you with my departing memory from that distant corner of the Russian Tundra…
On my last morning in camp I headed up the icy steps to the helipad, stopping at the top to look north towards the river and tundra beyond, and to where the previous night's Northern Lights had danced through the arctic air. I realised then exactly where I was and what I had done. My experience had been perfect. I’d learnt more about salmon fishing than I could ever have dreamt, I’d met some incredible people, who I’d guided onto some stunning fish, I’d even managed a few crackers myself… Christ, I even saw a bear. It had been one hell of a challenge, but I’d done it. As the "whoosh whoosh" of helicopter blades reached a new pitch and we slowly lifted off the ground, none of these things seemed to matter though. What did matter was the people I was leaving behind and the strong relationships I had forged in the wilderness at Ryabaga. As I stared out the window hoping nobody would notice the tear in my eye, I just caught the glimpse of a boat, heading round the turn in gold beach, of to chase down another perfect Ponoi Atlantic salmon.
The River Ponoi is the largest river on the Kola peninsular, flowing east to the White Sea. Ryabaga camp lies about 60km from the estuary and is a completely serviced camp offering up to 20 guests some of the best salmon fishing in the world every week from when the ice melts at the end of May to the start of October. To find out more about the river please visit: www.ponoiriver.com
The above article includes extracts from Mark’s Blog, which he plans on keeping up to date with adventures at home and further afield.
http://seariverhill.blogspot.co.uk