The Fly Shop800·669·3474

Included in your angling package at the Ichanga Float is all ground and air transportation once in Kamchatka and all food, accommodation and guides.

Not included in your angling package at Ichanga Float are airfare and travel expenses from your home to Kamchatka, Russian visitor's visa, fishing gear, flies, medical evacuation insurance (required), and alcohol.

The Fly Shop® is not in the insurance business, but we recommend Travel Guard coverage as a service with a desire to see your best interests protected. It is impossible to know when an unfortunate situation (loss of luggage, fly rods, illness in the family, or an accident) may occur. However, such things can and do happen, and this insurance can provide a means of recourse against non-refundable financial losses.

• Travel Insurance Information

However, we strongly recommend arriving a day early. This allows a chance to acclimate to the time change, so you’re not a vegetable when you arrive to the river. It also allows for any possible lost luggage or airline delays. If you miss the helicopter departure into camp, you will either miss your entire week of fishing or have to charter a very expensive extra helicopter flight into camp!

If you do plan on arriving a day early (recommended), please let us know as soon as you make your flight reservations so that we can work with our local partners in Kamchatka to arrange overnight lodging for you.

For overnights in Petropavlovsk, guests will typically be housed at one of Martha Madsen’s cozy guest houses in Yelisovo, or the Art Hotel near the airport. Nightly lodging fees (not included in your fishing package), range from $60-$100; guests are typically accommodated in double occupancy, but pending availability single rooms can sometimes be arranged by special request. The Fly Shop will make the reservations for you, and you will be able to settle up upon arrival.

Transfer to Camp:
All guests heading the Savan, Ichanga, or Southern Wilderness Floats will be met in the morning by Martha or Vadim at your place of lodging (they will communicate the time with you the night before), or at the airport if you are arriving that morning. They will ask for your passports to make copies to fill out the paperwork that will be required for departure from Russia at the end of your trip.

The first few hours in Kamchatka are always an exercise in patience. Understand that this is Russia, and communication from the helicopter companies is often lackluster at best. Keep in mind that the outfitters want you to get into camp as much as you do, and they are often at the whim of the helicopter companies. The helicopter companies don’t get paid unless they fly, so their priority, too, is to get you into camp… safely. Mornings in Petropavlovsk are frequently foggy, and the helicopters cannot fly until the fog clears. If the weather is clear in the morning, you will head straight to the heliport. If not, you will have the option to relax at Martha’s guest house, or walk to the nearby Old Castle Restaurant, which has very good food (and local draught beer, Kamchatksi #1). Lunch and/or drinks at the restaurant are not included in the package price, but typically range from $20-$30. They do not accept US dollars, but they do usually accept credit cards, or Martha and Vadim can exchange dollars for Rubles.

As soon as the fog lifts and the pilots give weather clearance, everyone will board the bus for the 30 minute drive to the heliport on the outskirts of Yelisovo. Once there, you will load your bags onto the Mi8 helicopter and lift off for BaseCamp. The helicopter flight from Yelisovo lasts for about 50 minutes, and is often one of many highlights from the trip. Sometimes head sets are provided, but this is Russia and you never know so it is recommended that you bring some earplugs for the noise of the rotors. The flight will take you over countless rivers and streams, and past several volcanoes.

Upon arrival at Base Camp – a hunting lodge nestled in a clearing a short stroll from the lower Savan River – guests will disembark the helicopter and unload all of their gear. Be sure to collect all of your bags and keep an eye on them, as the helicopter will quickly be reloaded with the equipment, gear, food, and luggage for the group heading to the left Savan float. That group, along with their guides and staff, will then re-board the helicopter to head into camp. 20 minutes later, the empty helicopter will return to BaseCamp to pick up the group, equipment, food, and luggage for the Ichanga group, then lift off again for the short, 10 minute flight upriver to the first camp on the Ichanga float.

As soon as you land and unload the helicopter, the crew will begin setting up camp while you can rig up your gear, don your waders, and start fishing! We recommend a mouse pattern to start with, but on both Ichanga and Savan almost anything works, including mice, streamers, and sometimes even traditional dry flies.

5.5 Full Fishing Days:
The angling days are long, while the weather can range from warm and comfortable to cold and wet (be prepared for either eventuality!). The Ichanga is shallow all the way across, with numerous braids and channels. Fish everything, and you will be surprised at how many giant rainbows you will find, sometimes in just a few inches of water. Where there are no trout, there are often schools of hundreds of dolly varden char from 14-26 inches.

Lunch will be packed with you by the guides. A cook and camp assistant travel in a separate raft and do the large majority of “camp work.” Each pair of anglers are responsible for maintaining their own tent and inflatable sleeping mattresses. All camp equipment – except your sleeping bag - is provided as part of the trip.

Returning Home:
On the final morning, guests have time to dry clothes and waders, re-pack their bags, and prepare for the trip home. The guides and camp staff will break down camp and deflate the rafts to be ready for the helicopter, but if you want to fish this last day there is time in the morning for several more hours of fishing around camp. The head guide will also come around at this time to collect any gratuities you may wish to leave for the guides and staff for the week.

You will typically need to overnight in Yelisovo, unless departing on the weekly flight to Anchorage, as most of the departing flights through Moscow or Vladivostok/Seoul take off in the morning. There are some afternoon departures, but due to the un-predictable timing of the helicopter flights out of camp, the outfitters cannot guarantee they can get you back to town in time to catch those afternoon flights. The Fly Shop will help make these arrangements for you (not included in the package price), and you can settle up prior to departure at the hotel.

Vadim will meet you again and transfer you to the airport. If there is time, the bus can also take the group to a nearby store for souvenir shopping. Vadim will get everyone the departure paperwork at this time, which you will need to present along with your passport and visa at immigrations when departing Russia.

Each morning the two fishing boats head down stream and spread out to avoid "double fishing" any one section. Meanwhile the cook and camp assistant break down the camp and float on ahead of the fishing boats. Toward evening the forward boat selects a camp site and begins erecting camp. We use high tech four season tents (two people per tent) and camping equipment. We provide thick comfortable sleeping pads, but guests must bring their own sleeping bag and towel.

Staff does all the cooking, cleaning, etc., while you fish until dinner or crack a cold beer by the fire.

The food on our Ichanga River float trips is typically very tasty and plentiful, a combination of fresh-made soups and salads, fresh-caught fish, and other simple Russian staples such as stroganoff, stew, etc.

Beer and Vodka can be pre-ordered and provided on the floats, while other or special libations need to be brought from the United States or purchased at Duty Free in Anchorage.

This is the most hard-core trout fishing trip most people will ever sign up for, but there are no objective whitewater hazards. The most uncomfortable situations encountered on these trips is rain, so it is imperative that all your luggage be made of completely waterproof material.

talented professionals with years of Russian and/or other international camp management experience. They are selected not just for their significant on-water talents, but as curious, enthusiastic representatives of Kamchatka.

Our Russian guides come from varied backgrounds, usually associated with biology, wildlife management, hunting, trapping or commercial fishing. Flyfishing being a relatively new sport to Russia, our guides come equipped with varying levels of pure flyfishing knowledge. Some are exceptional, having been with us for 10 or more years. Others have been brought on board for their skills as woodsmen and watermen, whose technical abilities are still evolving, but who are in rhythm with the lives and habitat of rainbow trout.

Every staff member works to see the smile on your face when you hook up.

Wilderness expeditions at Ichanga and Savan are based around a loose daily schedule of breakfast at 8 a.m., followed by camp breakdown and on the river by 9 a.m. The angling days are long, while the weather can range from warm and comfortable to cold and wet (be prepared for either eventuality!). Both the Ichanga and Savan Rivers are shallow all the way across, with numerous braids and channels. Sections are quite broad, while the river remains shallow and you can wade across it most places. While the fish will hold along the edges, in side channels, and around boulders and logjams, they are also often found in the middle of the river in shallow buckets and depressions created by spawning salmon. Even amongst spawning salmon, you do not need to fish beads or egg patterns! Mice will almost always be the best producer for big rainbows, while streamers and sometimes dry flies will also produce trout, char, and sometimes salmon as well. Fish everything, and you will be surprised at how many giant rainbows you will find, sometimes in just a few inches of water. Where there are no trout, there are usually schools of hundreds of dolly varden char from 14-26 inches.

At the end of the last full day of fishing, everyone will board the rafts and row the last few miles of the Savan down to BaseCamp, where you'll join the other group that had been fishing the Ichanga. BaseCamp is a comfortable building with beds for up to 11 people, plus (more important at the end of the week), a spacious bathroom with flush toilet and a hot shower. Dinner is usually late the last night, and a special affair with both groups regaling each other with stories, toasts, and fishing yarns from their wilderness adventures.

There are 3 fishing methods used throughout the Savan River drainage. These trout are more aggressive than their North American cousins, and attack almost any moving fly pattern with reckless abandon.

Mouse:
The topwater phenomenon of larger-than-normal trout attacking mice on the surface is what really sets Kamchatka angling apart from anywhere else in the world. Real mice slip and fall into the river from overhanging limbs and grass and then swim like a cork at a down-and-across angle. As they swim, they throw small V-wake contrails off their back end which the trout key to. Anglers replicate this action by plopping their flies against the opposite bank and skittering them across the river, on tension and under control. What follows has got to be the most exciting thing in freshwater flyfishing. Since a live mouse in the stomach of a rainbow trout can do some damage, they tend to take the fly with a ferocious, bone-crushing chomp with the intention of killing the mouse before they swallow it. This behavior is obviously on the surface, totally visible to the angler. The skill comes in controlling your nerves to NOT set the hook when the fish merely swirls behind it - sometime 2, 3, 4 or more times - before actually committing.

Streamer:
Salmon smolt and other juvenile fish make up a significant portion of Kamchatka trout and chars' diets. Clousers, woolly buggers, string leeches, baitfish and sculpin patterns all work very well on the Savan throughout the season. Small fish elicit a chase response from their predators, so often it is best to give the fly a little movement as it swings through the water column. And like with the mouse, it's best to learn to identify likely structure in the river (tree roots, riffle-pools, rocks, undercut banks, etc.) that offer rest areas for the fish adjacent to heavier currents where they can surprise-attack their food.

Dry Fly:
Traditional dry fly fishing is admittedly yet to be fully explored on the Savan system. It's a spring creek and we see a variety of insects including stoneflies, mayflies, and caddis hatching throughout the season. The mouse-fishing is so good that most anglers stick with that or throw big streamers, but the few anglers who have explored casting traditional floating flies have all done well, including large attractors, small Parachute Adams, and just about anything in between. These fish are aggressive, and seem eager to sample just about anything that might be food.

Fly Selections:
We offer a great Fly Selection option for all of our Kamchatka destinations. These selections are NOT generic, pre-packaged fly selections. Every specialty fly selection from The Fly Shop is personally selected by one of our travel experts that have fished these destinations not just once but a bunch of times.