"THE BERSERKERS OF THE YOKANGA RIVER", published in Trout & Salmon

April 2003



The salmon that time forgot

How often have you read about the leviathan salmon that once swam up our home rivers – the Tay, the Wye and the Usk for example? How often have you gazed at those sepia-tinted plates of our great grandfathers and, more regularly, our great grandmothers stiffly posing with formidably large fish, and wondered about that first electric sensation when the captor’s fly was arrested by one of these titanic creatures.

Do all these thoughts have you slipping into a wistful melancholia about the fact that man’s inexorable “progress” has long since put paid to any chance you might have had of doing battle with such a force of nature? Well snap out of it! I’ve just returned from the Yokanga River on the northern coast of Russia’s Kola peninsula and in a week our party of eleven rods caught 8 salmon over thirty pounds, including a 51” monster that left its captor, David Morrison, a shaking, gibbering and elated wreck. Going on records for the River Alta, this fish must have been, at the very least, in the upper forties, and, predictably, we reckon to have lost bigger fish. Every one of these astonishing, vital & elemental animals was bright silver, tigerishly strong and primevally aggressive.

It’s a humiliating irony that whilst we poke fun at the almost Orwellian disfunctionality that characterises Russian society (spend four hours at Murmansk airport for a crash-course in this), the Russians have recognised the value of their salmon as a natural resource in a way that we have singularly failed to do. The nets came off of the Yokanga six years ago, and the fishing gets better and better every year as a result. All fish are returned to continue on their epic journey & the guides are well-versed in careful fish handling. All hooks are barbless and only singles and doubles are tolerated. No doubt the salmon are bringing in more revenue as sport-fish than they ever would do in cans.

The fishing is not easy – I was fortunate enough to be with a group of able & obsessively keen anglers, and the pooling of knowledge & ideas at supper was undoubtedly a big factor in our success. The Yokanga, by the way, boasts a magnificent timber lodge that is the perfect place to gass about all things piscatorial, until the river draws you inexorably back.

The right kit is important: quite a few of us (myself included) favoured “Guideline” shooting heads & amnesia running line to cover the great wide pools of the Yokanga. These lines need to be carefully & progressively cut down until the optimum casting length of head is found – get it right and they fairly fizz across the river! Lines tend to be floaters with different speed sink-tips, so that the line fishes over the top of the huge boulders that litter the bed of the river. These boulders also contribute to some pretty treacherous wading - most people took a ducking or two in the river’s icy waters, but the camp’s drying room will have you (and your clothes) warm as toast in around ten minutes. Stay off of the “sauce” if you’re fishing after supper…

The rocks also prove hazardous once you’ve hooked a fish, and in previous years there have been countless tales of fish shearing even very heavy leaders on these jagged obstructions.
However, we found that Seaguar fluorocarbon, in 30 & 35lb test, despite fraying on the rocks, would retain a good deal of its strength. This stuff, backed up with Loop tube doubles (4’s and 6’s) and 45lb test Gelspun backing proved strong enough to match even the berserkers of the Yokanga, and of the big fish lost, all escaped due to the hook-hold, rather than the leader, giving way. This strength of leader also allows the fish to be subdued as quickly as possible, allowing them the maximum chance of surviving the fight. There’s no weak link, so remember your precious Sage (!), and if you hook the bottom, put down the rod & pull with your bare hands.
The guides have dinghies, which can be used in emergencies…

As for flies, my favourites were an assortment of beautiful templedog-style tubes flies tied by Paddy Bonner (particularly his “Yokanga Gold” & “Litza Golden Dream”, both on a Loop bottle tube), and also some new Partridge Mikael Frodin patterns, which are exquisite in and out of the water. Willy Gunn variants, Ally’s Shrimps and all the usual suspects also worked their magic.

So, how did I get on for the week? I had thirteen fish, including two thirty-two pounders and one fabulous 35lb cock fish that I will remember for as long as I live. The whole bizarre rollercoaster ride that makes fly-fishing for salmon such a unique branch of our sport seemed somehow compressed into the nerve-shredding thirty-five minutes that it took to subdue this fish.

I’d fished hard all day down a beat known as “Golden Reach”, without moving or seeing a fish.
Well into the week, and averaging eighteen fishing hours a day, I’d started to acquire a slightly crazed, “wild man of Borneo” aspect. Brian Fratel had suggested a shave, but as I pointed out, shaving time is fishing time, and when the big early fish of the Yokanga are running, you want that fly in the water.

Normally, after eight hours or so without a sniff, I start to go through the motions a little – casting becomes a little sloppy & my mind starts to wander. On the Yokanga, however, you are always, always aware that your next fish might just be a thirty, and who knows, perhaps the one that blows old Miss Ballantyne out of the water…

I came to a spot at around four in the afternoon that just seemed like the most perfect salmon pool one could ever wish to see – a long, even glide drawing into a boulder- studded tail with a swirling eighty yard rapid below. Any salmon that had run this formidable, white-water torrent would just have to stop in this dreamy-looking water for a breather before continuing on its way.
My partner, Laurie Hickman, the camp manager- great company and a disarmingly warm, genial host, didn’t share my enthusiasm and, mumbling about the water being slightly too “big” just yet, he wandered off to explore downstream. Vova, our guide went with him, leaving me to fish the pool down. The pool demanded extra care – a cast & just half a step each time, along with a regular change of fly pattern. Occasionally when salmon fishing, I have experienced an almost mystical sense of premonition, and as I worked my way towards the “sweet spot” of the pool, I felt that prickly sense of anticipation come over me. I’d just changed my battle-scared Templedog for a smaller, reddish-orange Ally’s that I’d tied on a Loop bottle tube, and as the fly started to lift and accelerate, way out in the river, I almost expected the inquisitive taps that trembled down the line to my fingers.

As a dyed-in-the-wool trout fisherman, I find that it takes superhuman self-discipline not to pull the fly out of the fish’s mouth. I resisted the impulse, and was rewarded a second later, when I felt that exquisite, heart-stopping rush that only those who have caught a salmon on the fly can know.

I lifted the rod and felt the slow ponderous weight of a big salmon, about to take its predicament more seriously. After a couple of violent head-shakes, the fish attempted its first leap. Although the salmon failed to get properly airborne, instead crashing heavily through the surface in a stupendous explosion of spray, I was a left in no doubt that this was a salmon to pray for. My heart leapt as the fish ploughed furiously upstream and I gingerly worked my way out of the water and got downstream of the fish.

For the next five minutes, we went at it, the fish crashing around the pool in a demented fury whilst I hung on grimly and screamed my lungs out for the “cavalry” to help out.

Vova’s manic Cheshire-cat grin abruptly popped up over the rock above me, and as if sensing that the re-enforcements had arrived, the salmon suddenly kited around and, thrashing wildly, set off for the brutal, rock-strewn rapids below us. Vova motioned frenziedly at the rubber dinghy that we had used to navigate our way down the river. I stumbled blindly across the notoriously slippery moonscape rocks that flank the river and half-fell into the wildly pitching raft, whilst Vova slipped the rope &, still clambering into the boat, shoved us off into the current.

I held my 15’1” Sage as high as I could, but I could already see the line switch-bladding around two separate rocks in a miserable cats cradle that would surely separate me from the fish that in all the years I have been fishing (childhood excepting), I had most wanted to land. Vova deftly manoeuvred us across the current and we got lucky. The fish ran the right way, freed the line and, gaining the fast water, set off down the clear channel at the centre of the rapid. One snatched glance at Vova’s bright-eyed craziness translated his babbling instantly. I braced my knees against the sides of the dinghy and reeled furiously as we hit the main current and set off down the white water, spinning and yawing drunkenly on the cross-currents. The rod bucked & hooped in my hands as we were engulfed in spray. I stayed doggedly tight to the fish and felt that I was starting to slow its progress when the line went suddenly, sickeningly slack. I could have wept – the volley of expletives seemed hopelessly inadequate and it took me a second or two to recognise that Vova was jabbering and frantically motioning to reel in as quickly as possible, whilst simultaneously trying to control the boat. I knew in my heart that the fish was gone, but I dutifully reeled in as fast as I could, just in case the barbless hooks had somehow stayed in.
In a fabulous instant, as the last of the shooting line went back onto the reel, the fly-line tore out of the water in a thrilling, ripping arc and the fish, still very much attached, came rushing past us, within five feet of the boat, and raced back up the rapid.

The realisation that I was still stuck fast to this savage, indefatigable brute was like some divine redemption – in some ways more thrilling than hooking the fish in the first place. However, this “back from the dead” reprise was instantly tempered by the realisation that we were now in a position where we needed to row up the rapid in order to gain parity with the fish.

Vova’s valiant, vaguely demented attempts to row up the white water would on any other occasion have had me in stitches, but this was a crisis. I clamped down on the fish and bullied it savagely. The fish attempted to continue its run, but on such a tight and unrelenting line, its energies only served to send it arcing across the current and into a wide lagoon adjacent to the rapid. Vova used an oar to drift us round out of the main flow and we scrambled out of the boat, all the time shortening the distance between our quarry and us. We clambered our way up the bank to where the fish was wallowing exhausted, in the slack water. After some last, desperately nervous moments when the fish threatened to bolt out into the river again, Vova waded aggressively into the river and unceremoniously swept the beaten fish into his outsize net!

We spluttered with laughter and clapped each other on the back in an outburst of uninhibited joy and relief – Vova unhooked the fish whilst I scrambled up the bank for the camera.
As Vova struggled to hold up the salmon for the camera, I got a proper look at the fabulous proportions of this great silver colossus of a fish for the first time. It wasn’t dead and faded and sepia-brown, it was wild and alive and it sparkled a pure iridescent blue-silver in the livid grey northern light. As I struggled to focus, all the long hours of “cast and step” melted in a suffusion of elation and awe. At 35lb, I realised that it was probably the biggest salmon that I would ever hook and that I had to savour every last ounce of the experience. Naturally, it took me less than 24 hours to recognise the lack of ambition in this sentiment...

The next day, my last of the trip, I hooked a fish in the fabled Lower Nor-camp pool that plodded around at the tail of the pool before launching into an upstream charge of astonishing power. This fish broke the surface looking more like some freakish silver dolphin than a salmon before, in a predictable, gut-wrenching instant, the hook-hold failed. It took some time for the torrent of obsenities, babbled simultaneously in both English and Russian, to subside.

When it did, I suddenly recognised what I’d just kissed goodbye to: undoubtedly the biggest salmon that I was ever likely to stick a hook into.

Unless of course I were to come back.

When I stumbled back into work, after the long haul via Murmansk & Helsinki and the queue for a cab at Heathrow, the first call that I made was not to any one of the numerous clients demanding that I urgently return their calls...it was to Pete McLeod at Frontiers.

The conversation went thus:

Pete: “Same week next year?”
Myself: “And every year for the foreseeable future - how’d you guess?”
Pete:”Third call this morning!”

As they say in the trade, book early to avoid disappointment...



Contacts:

Pete McLeod
Frontiers International
18, Albemarle St
London
W1S 4HR
Phone:0207 493 0798
Fax: 0207 629 5569



Brian Fratel
Farlows
5 Pall Mall
London
SW1 5NP
Phone:0207 839 2423
Fax: 0207 839 8959


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