Into the Kola: The Wildest Days of Salmon Fishing

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s Kola Peninsula became one of the most extraordinary salmon fishing destinations on earth.

Julian Pullan, author of Right Place, Right Time: The Pursuit and Protection of Salmon, joins Jim Murray to look back on an era when pioneering anglers travelled into some of the most remote rivers in the world in search of wild Atlantic salmon.

Julian made 19 trips to the Kola Peninsula and recalls the excitement of those early years: vast, largely unexplored rivers, incredible numbers of fresh salmon, remote camps, helicopters, poaching, local mafia and the extraordinary characters drawn to what became a golden age of salmon fishing.

He also explains why those experiences carry a warning for today.

They discuss:

• The opening up of Russia’s Kola Peninsula to western anglers
• Discovering and mapping previously unfished salmon pools
• Industrial-scale poaching and the realities of fishing remote Russia
• Why Kola salmon were such extraordinary fighting fish
• Julian’s first Russian salmon and the fish he remembers most
• How salmon populations are shifting northwards
• Why even the great Russian rivers are no longer immune from decline
• Aquaculture and the future of wild salmon
• What Julian would do with £1 billion for salmon conservation
• Why anglers should contribute more financially to protecting the fish they pursue
• And where Julian would spend his final day of fishing

Part adventure story and part cautionary tale, it is a fascinating look back at what happens when seemingly limitless abundance begins to disappear.

Season 3 of The Last Salmon is in partnership with Loop — driving change for wild fish and wild places.

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