Into the West...

The westernmost part of the Czech Republic is a troubled country - since time immemorial inhabited by ethnic Germans, who were expelled in the aftermath of WWII it was for 40 years a no entry zone due to its proximity to Western Germany. History left many scars in the countryside, but an interesting side effect was that the  isolation resulted in some fabulous trout fishing.

For this weekend I received invitation from my friend Rosťa, who besides having an interesting job as a moulder of lava in basalt foundry is a first class fisherman of small streams and a veritable font of knowledge of the west country rivers. I have agreed not to delve too deeply into the details of the rivers we fished, but a couple of pics should be OK.

Rosťa is a terror on the small streams, in part helped by his unusual fly rod - an ancient 7 and 1/2 foot Cortland fiberglass rod rated AFTMA 6/7. The heavy line loads his wimpy rod easily allowing for hellishly accurate casts, while the short length leaves lots of room for manoeuvrings under the overhanging foliage.

Rosťa gave me a grade C for my fishing - I got positive points for tying flies that fish liked, but negative for not having sufficiently mastered the arcane art of jungle casting. I took it as an overall compliment :-)

We successfully pursued a number of indigenous brown trout and grayling and introduced rainbows and brook trout. The rainbows and brookies don't spawn naturally in our rivers, but over here they were stocked as fingerlings and left to grow naturally to perfect condition - not like the malformed sickly stockies so common in the rest of the country.