Otava river
Otava is another nice and big river flowing from Šumava Mountains. When I was studying Medicine University in Pilsen, I was doing whole day trips instead of lessons in Autumn (and my studies finished according that 
). I sat on the train in the morning and went to Sušice and next I was fishing whole day going downstream and next I sat on train in another station and returned to college. It was not unusual to catch 100 graylings a day on dry this time. Cormorants affected significantly the fish stock but it has been improving in last few years as winters has been not too cold and we have not hosted so many cormorants in South Bohemia.
Upper part, which is is managed by the Western Board of CAU, belongs to the trout and grayling zone of river, lower part from grayling zone to barbel zone is managed by myself. It is a pity, that my colleagues from the Western board are not enough courageous to heighten the size limit for grayling to 40 cm like me, in their beautiful stretch of river is difficult to catch grayling over 30 cm, people simply kill all of them. And their statement, that it is better, when people kill them than cormorants and people pay permits, is poor. In our waters few kilometres downstream is grayling 36-38 cm long not rare and you can meet fish over 40 cm.
We will have two competitions in Otava river this autumn, so I decided to visit the river for practice. The opportunity occurred when I was taking my family to one week holiday at Grandma in Pilsen. First weekend I visited upper part in Žichovice, it was very hot day and flow was about 6 m3/s, I got from 7 till 11 about 35 fish, mostly grayling of 25 cm, three of 30 cm, dace (one 31 cm long monster), chub, roach and also brown trout and rainbow. The best method was nymphing with 0,10 leader and small jig flies size 16, fish were distributed equally in holes in riffles and in mouths of pools, and also under banks. But big part of the river was very shallow as the flow was extremely low.
In the beginning of the next week came a heavy storm in the mountains and the flow increased from 7 m3/s till 30 for two days, but it decreased quickly and on Saturday the flow was again about 8 m3/s. I visited a little lower part close the town Hydčice with my friend Lukáš, fishing was more difficult as fish moved from riffles and they were aggregated only in several places, so we always caught more fish from one place and in next similar place was nothing. Interesting was, that in one place under weeping willow Lukáš got 40 cm long chub and two dace of 30 cm and next I caught there the monster roach on picture.
I thing, that bigger problem for fish could be in the future shoals of shelduck, they are less shy than cormorants, very effective and the stay here whole year around.
