The wet and cold days of the early season seem to be past now, what a relief! This weekend I ventured out north to investigate a new fishery that promised an opportunity for wild fish in wild places.
The river Kamenice has a special meaning to me, as I have fond memories (as shown in attached video :-) of it from my whitewater kayaking days.
This time of the year the waters were low and clear, with the rocky bottom clearly visible, and overall looking much tamer. But it was the same river none the less.
The white butterbur flowers were in bloom on the margins, and some grayish mayflies and small Bibios were on wing. Local Brownies were picking them off the surface and could be tempted on a dry fly. The fish were on the smallish side, but obviously locally bred and beautifully colored. Plus they attacked the fly with zest and fought with an attitude.
The color of the fish matched the color of the stream bed perfectly and upon releasing seemed to disappear immediately, despite the seemingly bright yellows and reds.
Later in the day I moved to slower parts of the river, where the brownies were joined by Grayling.
At around 5 o'clock the hatch intensified, and I suddenly found myself standing knee deep in a river, surrounded on all sides by rising fish, oblivious of my presence. Quite an experience! The heavier hatch brought up also the bigger fish, some of them over the 30 cm / 12 inch lenght, making them "decent fish" for the water.
All of my catches were on my Owl and CDC mayfly. It is my first choice for imitating medium gray mayflies, and since it performed so well I found no reason to experiment.
The tie:#16 Hanák 130BL hook (or any other lightweight dry fly hook, e.g. Tiemco 103BL)
8/0 UNI thread Tan
tail of barred Coq de León fibres
body of a herl from an Eagle Owl feather, reinforced by counter wrapping with the finest copper wire I could find
wing of CDC feathers, spun in loop and wound as hackle, trimmed to size and shape
The faster riffles held - as expected - Brown trout, which could be tempted to rise by my Drowning Caddis imitation.
The slower stretches held Grayling. Some caddis were hatching, but the hatch was very sparse, and Grayling refused the big imitations. A change in tactics was called for, and the finesse approach of #17 No hackle CDC quill on long leader was soon rewarded by a couple of beautifully colored Grayling.
When I exited the stream, having had my fill of Grayling fishing for the day, I encountered two love struck toads. June it is long past their normal mating season, so I can only assume they were doing it for fun rather then procreation ;-)
The white butterbur flowers were in bloom on the margins, and some grayish mayflies and small Bibios were on wing. Local Brownies were picking them off the surface and could be tempted on a dry fly. The fish were on the smallish side, but obviously locally bred and beautifully colored. Plus they attacked the fly with zest and fought with an attitude.
The color of the fish matched the color of the stream bed perfectly and upon releasing seemed to disappear immediately, despite the seemingly bright yellows and reds.
Later in the day I moved to slower parts of the river, where the brownies were joined by Grayling.
At around 5 o'clock the hatch intensified, and I suddenly found myself standing knee deep in a river, surrounded on all sides by rising fish, oblivious of my presence. Quite an experience! The heavier hatch brought up also the bigger fish, some of them over the 30 cm / 12 inch lenght, making them "decent fish" for the water.
All of my catches were on my Owl and CDC mayfly. It is my first choice for imitating medium gray mayflies, and since it performed so well I found no reason to experiment.
The tie:
Later in the day the water cleared a bit and the temperature increased somewhat (to whopping 8°C), which brought up a hatch of smallish mayflies. This allowed us to drop the cumbersome CZ nymphs and start catching grayling as they were meant to be fished - fine and far off on delicate dry flies.
By the end of the day the two of us caught and released some twenty fish, most of them on the dry fly. Given the challenging environment I considered this result a success. The best producing fly turned out to be my Hare's Mask Emerger mayfly imitation.
The tie:
The waters were a slightly muddy from the latest rains (we had an unusually damp and cold springtime this year) but buzzer fishing seemed to be the correct approach. Interesting thing was that the resident rainbows were more interested in light olive buzzers on dropper fished more actively, while the whitefish liked the black buzzer on point fished static, close to bottom.
The tie:
The tie:
The river turned out to be as unfishable as we had expected, and even though we assaulted it with flies of the Heavy Metal kind (Tungsten beads of 4 mm plus some lead) it refused to yield a single fish. The waters were high, muddy and cold (about 7°C). The fish were sensibly hugging the bottom in the deepest of deep pools and refused to be tempted with any of our flies.
And despite the fact that we got what we expected and not what we hoped for fishing wise we had a wonderful time, confirming the old saying that what matters is not the quarry, but the chase.
