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Letter from Dominic Maciocia
Dear Steffen, Arni and all the team at Laxa,
I am writing to let you know what a fantastic and memorable time my brother and I had last week on the Acha float trip. Unbelievably it was just the two of us on the trip and we were looked after brilliantly by Sacha and his two sons, Ed and Joseph. We had let them know at the start of the trip, to just relax, not to bother too much with the formalities that they might need to do with a larger party and this was sealed and firm friendships were made that evening with polishing off a bottle of fine malt whisky.
The fishing started a little later than usual, I suspect, on Sunday morning but we had terrific sport for the first three days at the top camp. Things slowed a little in the middle of the week with the water temperature rising but that did not dampen our spirits and we took to swimming the river instead. With the colder weather on the last couple of days, we once again had unbelievable sport, particularly on the last day when phil and I landed 20 fish between us, with many more that could have been landed had we not been playing them so hard, in order to return them safely. My last hour on the acha was landing 4 fish, losing 4 fish all on a fastly stripped and skated muddler, on a pool about half a km up from the acha camp, casting into the shallow water and retrieving into deeper water watching these submarines bow-wave towards the fly.
Phil and I weren’t too bothered about the ‘numbers game’, but were delighted with the amount of fish that we finally got – something around the 65 mark for the week – more importantly with many memorable takes and lost fish, the biggest being a cracking 18 pounder on the first day. Apart from the first fish which I landed on a double hander, all the rest were landed on single handed rods – with one rod fishing with possibly the cheapest rod money could buy – a Shakespeare beginner rod that cost around 20 pounds (bought in an emergency about two years ago) – this landed close to 30 fish leaving us both with incredibly sore wrists but smiles on our sunburnt faces.
We have to write a special mention of thanks also to Steffan, who looked after us fantastically well at Murmansk and for two days at the Acha camp (we arrived a day earlier as SAcha and the boys were packing up the two camps). He also kindly took us out on the final evening for a couple of hours on the ponoi with Mark, one of the Scandinavian guides there which resulted in 4 fish, including a nice 15 pounder landed on 6lb nylon. A privilege to fish the mighty Ponoi, but definitely the Acha was a much more interesting experience, we probably only fished through pools no more than twice, and while floating down, missed many magnificent pools that we’ll save until next year.
We would love to provisionally book a week again doing the float trip – probably one week earlier I think next year so please let me know the availability and pricing for 2009.
I don’t want to leave on a sour note as I have absolutely no complaints about the guides or the trip at all, however I think it’s important that I mention that the price of alcohol was scandalous! We had taken a couple of bottles of our own whisky but I have to say that for $7.50 a bottle of beer, it’s a little difficult to bear – not so much the cost but the principle. I do understand that Laxa has no control over this as this is run by the Russian side, but if you have any sway over them, perhaps next year you can get this down to even $5 dollars – I’m sure we would have found that a little more palatable – or even better, some decent cheap Russian beer.
Anyway, I’m sure you are aware of this and are doing everything you can to resolve it. Once again, many thanks to all concerned and I wish you every success for the rest of the season and I look forward to returning next year. If we can book out the whole trip with some of our own guests, as I’m sure when our fishing friends see our photos, they’ll jump at the chance. We’ll get some photos and videos to you for the website as soon as they are uploaded.
Very warm regards,
Dominic
Dominic Maciocia
Director Candy Creations Manufacturing Group
He will send us some pictures from the trip to Russia tomorrow.
