October Optimism

The gloomy days of early October have passed, and the mist and drizzle were replaced by sunny, if crisp and cold, autumn days. Nothing awakens grayling appetite like a combination of overnight frost and a good BWO hatch, so I headed to the mountains of Šumava to pay a visit to what is arguably the best grayling fishery in Czech lands.

By the village of Dobrá the Vltava river meanders through fields of sedge (locally called "pineapples", quite challenging to pass through). In its gentle flow grows ranunculus and other plants, supporting a variety of aquatic life. The banks of the river are littered by concrete bunkers, now overgrown by the forest but still serving as mementos of darker times.

By about noon a mixed hatch started, with blue winged olives and little stoneflies. Even an occasional big sedge (Rhyacophila sp.) could be seen, but it did not seem to find any risers. The most productive imitation were #18 green quill & CDC mayfly and #18 Hare's mask emerger. Especially the green quill was very hard for the grayling to resist.

Over the stretches of Ranuncul I caught several fine fish on a dry fly The surface activity peaked by about 2 PM, but I could see occasional rises until about 5 PM.

The fish showed a surprising variance in color - some were very light, with only a few blackish scales, while other were of very dark complexion.

October Gloom

After an unusually warm and sunny (and fishing-wise very dull) September the Czech Republic was hit by the old fashioned dull October drizzle. The temperatures dropped about 15°C - from over twenty to just about 6°C - and the fine autumn gloom settled in.

The same change in weather has also signaled the start of proper Grayling season, and as such was eagerly anticipated by many fly fishermen. We are strange creatures indeed...

For the weekend I headed north of Prague to my favorite rivers Kamenice and Jizera. The thin drizzle has caused a slight rise in the water, but as there has been hardly any rain in the past few weeks the countryside was very dry and soaked the thin rain very easily. The rivers were thus still rather low and only a little off color. A hatch of lightly greyish Baetis mayflies started to appear very predictably at around 1 PM and woke up the grayling to action.

I struggled in trying to catch a sizable fish, chiefly because of the sheer numbers and activity of the grayling youths. After a while I stopped my casting and settled to watch the drift of hatching duns and their slaughter by hungry fish. From my place on an old tree stump I could not see any surviving dun passing by alive. The Baetis duns came down like little sailing ships, drifting very gracefully downstream and the grayling picked them off one by one as some sort of sea monsters without showing any hint of mercy.

In a wilder stretch of the Kamenice river I happened to catch an out of season brown trout lady. I released her quickly and carefully, and she rewarded me by posing for a while in the shallow water, so I could make a picture of her in the slow drizzle.

On the Jizera river I caught a smallish Rainbow trout. It has quite surprised me by its unexpected beauty - I am not partial to stocked fish, grossly overweight with their short stubby fins and foolish need to attack anything remotely resembling a food pellet. I was however reminded how graceful they can grow, if stocked as small fry and left to grow feral. Not to mention the unmatched fighting spirit of a nature grown rainbow,

The best imitation of very lightly colored duns proved to be my Eagle Owl emergers, tied in size #18 with wing of CDC and bodies of Eagle Owl herl.

Grayling Candy

A couple ties for the Ladies, all tied on #18 Hanák 130BL hooks:

A little redhead

The tie
#18 Hanák 130BL hook
14/0 Sheer thread gray
Heron herl
3 CDC feathers
70 dernier red Danville thread to cover the head

Green Quill

The tie
#18 Hanák 130BL hook
14/0 Sheer thread gray
pardo Coq de León tail
3 CDC feathers
a pinch of natural hare fur to make the thorax

Hare Emerger

The tie
#18 Hanák 130BL hook
14/0 Sheer thread gray
3 strands of twisted orange flashabou
body of dubbed hare ribbed with #16 UNI gold tinsel
3 CDC feathers
a pinch of natural hare fur to make the thorax

Washing Line on Bohdaneč

Organizing the wedding has seriously cut into my fishing time, but with the affair done I decided to seek some quiet - and to replenish my stock of slivovitz - on my favorite small stillwater fishery in Bohdaneč. By this pond is a small distillery specializing in fruit brandy - plums, apples, apricots and the kind. Very much like the lochside distilleries in Scotland, but with a definite Central European twist.

The conditions were not perfect, as it was still quite hot and the water was full of algae, of almost coffee color. The sun was shining brightly and there was no wind. Few fish were active, taking hatching buzzer pupae. In order to connect with them I had to either offer them either a brightly colored orange lure - an effective, but not overly satisfying method - or a midge imitation fished very close to the surface.

At the end the best tactic proved to be the washing line method - using a very buoyant foam buzzer on point and two smaller "catching" buzzers on droppers, with a floating leader and line. My catching flies sank just a couple centimeters below the surface. Thus I was able to have some good sport without having to depart from imitative fly fishing.

Imitative buzzer:
#12 TMC2487 BL hook
Olive UNI 8/0 thread
Olive UNI stretch to form the body
Pearl UNI #16 tinsel
Burnt Orange Neon UNI 1/0 thread
White TMC Aero Dry Wing
Black Opossum dubbing

Buoyant buzzer:
#10 TMC2487 BL hook
Tan UNI 6/0 thread (thicker thread in order not to cut the foam)
White Booby foam post
Hare + Seal dubbing mix dyed Olive
Pearl #16 UNI tinsel

The Most Important Knot

This Saturday, in the chapel of Holy Trinity in the gardens of Červená Lhota chateau, I will be tying the most important knot of them all.

As a result I spent more time in recent weeks preparing these:

Than tying or fishing any of these:

And if my married friends are right it is not likely to get much better soon. But I am still looking forward to the moment... :)

Translation widget

Many readers of these pages are using Google Translate tool. I am flattered by the trouble they take to understand my ramblings and to make it easier for them I have added a Translation Widget to the blog.

Out of curiosity I tried to translate the page into my native Czech, and the result was very entertaining - it seems that fly fishing texts are not regular items on menu of the translation robots.

Spreading the Word

A friend of mine is a keen coarse fisherman, but I have a feeling there is a chance of making him see the light, cast aside his boilies & tripod and convert to Fly Fishing.

I hope a gift of this little fly box - made to suit the taste of trout on our local stillwater - would be enough to tip him to the dark side.

#10 Kamasan B110 Buzzer, Chinese Red

#10 Kamasan B110 Buzzer, Black, Pearl and Orange

#10 Kamasan B110 Buzzer, Dennis the Menace

#10 Black Lure

#10 Orange Lure

#12 GRHE Wet Fly

#12 GRHE Dry Fly