Once again it was time for autumn fishing!
This years autumn trip brought me to the Umba River on the Kola peninsula…and what a time I had…
The Umba Lodge is run by Salmon Junkies – a Steffen Juhl’s business. He also works as a camp manager in the lodge in autumn and takes care of everything on site.
Getting there
I flew via Moscow with Aeroflot – very easy – and was picked up with four other anglers at the airport for an evening ride to the lodge. We arrived at 1 o’clock in the morning…ready to fish the next day.
The river
The Umba is devided in two parts: the lower section (the actual Umba) and the upper river, the Krivetz. Especially the Krivetz is a beautiful river, wild with many rapids and a stunning scenery. Sometimes the scenery reminded me of the Gaspe peninsula in Canada, although the river beeing rougher and a bit bigger. All in all a perfect place for fishing!
The fishing
The anglers are teamed up (two rods fishing together) and assigned to a guide for the week. Steffen sets up a „fishing-schedule“ for the week: Every day you fish one beat in the morning and one in the afternoon. All the beats have a couple of pools, so there is more than enough room and water to fish and over the week you get to fish the whole river.
On the lower section the fishing is done from the shore/wading and from the boat. The boats are also used to get the anglers to the junction of the Krivetz…from the junction upstreams it is walking (max about 30-40 min to the upper pools). But the walk take you through some nice forrest, so definately not a waste of time!
The fishing is not the easiest – sometimes the wading is tough (I did not go swimming the whole week!), but except for two or three pools long cast are not needed.
The fishing is done with floating lines and sink tipps or fast sinking polyleaders. I used smaller tubes for most of the time. For colours of the flys black or orange/brown did the game for me.
The Umba Salmon
Fat..fatter…I never caught any salmon that were more fat and wider like those from the Umba. Umba river has a special kind of Salmon that stay in the river more than one year, they are called Osenkas. And these fish need some extra power for their freshwater journey.
This might be one reason why they fight like Bulldogs!
I was fortunate to catch some really nice ones on my trip. I had three fish of +20Lba and five between 15 and 17Lba. Some smaller ones completed my total catch.
All in all Umba are not a numbers game like the Ponoi, but the fish are bigger and the scenery much nicer (I didn’t like the wide, wider Ponoi).
In Umba you have the chance to catch some really big fish: I will always remember that sunny day at the Golden Pool (uppermost Pool of the Krivetz). Within two or three hours I first caught a nice 15Lba fish, than a 20Lba (I thought this is my day…but it got better…) and a 26Lbs! I couldn’t believe my luck!
About 90% of the fish I caught were silver and fresh!
The Lodge
The lodge is quite new with en suite bathrooms. All in all a very cosy place with a nice fireplace and a big Dinning table in the centre of the „socialising room“. The food was ok and the beer cold!
Would I go there again?
I have already booked my week for 2011;-))
Thanks to all the people I met there! Especially P and M! (no names for privacy reasons)
Cheers
David Jap