CNFW 2013 spring – a blessing in disguise
We had to cancel our spring course due to the terrible flood which affected whole republic and mainly the middle and northern parts, 15 people was killed and the damage is estimated at billion EURO…
Three attendants could not cancel their fights, so I asked Martin Musil and we decided to take care about them and to try to find a fishable river, at least to accompany them in pub I was checking websites with flow in rivers and with meteorological radars almost every hour and I had idea to go to Moravia, the eastern part of our country, which was not affected by rain so heavily, I ordered fishing permits and hotel, but on Thursday June 6th came another storm which raised water also in Moravian rivers, there were no floods, but rivers were unfishable. I had something to do in Vimperk on Thursday morning, so by the way home I visited Warm Vltava and it looked hopefully, water was high but it was already in the river bed and it was clear, downstream from Lenora was to high. Another expected storm missed South Bohemia, so we decided to go to Warm Vltava, I booked Penzion Lenora and on Friday 7th evening I picked Hendrik Eslin from South Africa and Kai from Finland up at the Prague Airport.
The journey was relatively quick and on the way we were checking Otava and Volyňka rivers, which were unfortunately unfishable. We arrived Lenora and accommodated in Penzion which is owned by mother of one of my fishing buddy Honza Witner and after few beers and few stories about South African crocodiles and hypo we fall to beds. After great breakfast we headed to the river close to Horní Vltavice, river was higher, but clear, we can say in ideal condition, and fish were hungry. I explained to Hendrik our system of nymphing and almost on the first cast I caught couple of brownies. Fish were concentrated only in some places, mainly on the edges and surprisingly not in the deeper parts and in pools. I can say, that it was nice day, we had great roasted dug with dumplings and cabbage for lunch and I vpersonally caught about fifty fish including few graylings of about 35 cm. Bets fly was red-tag on the jig hook with tungsten gold bead (Kai commented on it that after 1000 years of development of fly-patterns I discovered red-tag . My friends were also satisfied and we were lucky that few storms missed us by a whisker, however it was raining in the upper part of the catchment area an the water started rising and getting muddy at about six o´clock, so we decided to go to dinner.
In the morning was water higher, but still fishable and it was going down, so I found a little less steep part of the river. My friends adapted to fishing relatively quickly, fish were still active and some of them were even rising in the afternoon (Kai caught all of them on fluo-green Czech nymph size 6 …) , Kai got nice grayling and Hendrik caught roach, bleak, dace, and also nice brown trout.
Martin Musil with his son Martin jr. joined our group on Sunday afternoon and they brought the last member of our small team Hamid from Canada. At about six started pouring rain which raised river and it was unfishable for next two days, so guys visited Karels´ shop and Hanak shop. I had to go home to look after kids and to work and Martin took over our guests, he brought his fly-tying suitcase, so mainly the evenings were nourishing. The weather were relatively good since Tuesday and on Wednesday was river again fishable and they discovered the upper part of the fishery, in which is flow reduced by the channel to power-plant. I joined the group on Thursday afternoon, fishing was nice, we found the last not-fished parts of the river, lower parts were still to high, flow from Lipno to Vltava in Vyšší Brod was 130 m3/s …
On Friday morning we returned back to the stretch where we were starting our fishing week and it was nice to compare location of fish, we caught few nice browns, hope that Hendrik will send me the picture of the king of the Warm Vltava.
On Friday afternoon we visited small inflow of Volyňka river called Spúlka, the brook is full of small brownies and it was another nice experience for our students. Kai had to leave on Friday afternoon for a competition in Finland.
I checked flows in rivers on Friday afternoon and I found out, that flow from Lipno was reduced to 40 m3/s, which meant, that flow in Vltava 29 – Devil streams was reduced to usual flow of 2 m3/s and we decided to show to our friends this beautiful stretch of river and also the Lesanka Pub in Vyšší Brod. We warmed up in the lower more wide and more easy stretch and after the great lunch in Lesanka pub we wended to upper and more wild stretch. It was nice end of the week, fishing was not easy due to a lot of sticks in the water, but we really enjoyed it.
It is a pity that we had to cancel the course, it is fact, that although we were very lucky on the weather (after one week of temperatures over 35 °C it has been again raining for 5 days and there are another floods nowadays) , the fishable stretch was to small for 25 people and one week, but I´m sure that Autumn will be nice when we have no summer.