Slovakia April 2023
Michal and Peter offered me to go again to spring trip to Slovakia to fish Bešeňová Lake and to attend competition Kežmarská Zlatná Lake Cup, where I was second few years ago. First day we were fishing Bešeňová Lake, a mountain reservoir stocked regularly by rainbow trout, conditions were tough as it was sunny and no wind in the morning, but later in the afternoon a wind raised and we caught few nice fish, I was fishing washing line setup, sunburst blob in the point and two wets on droppers, half of fish I caught on the blob and second half on Bibio.
Competition hosted about 130 competitors, it consisted from 5 ground spread between two days. Fishing was great from the first round, I finished eighth, which was not bad, I was fishing mainly slow glass line and hover line and team of lures, the best was my sunburst killer as usually. Almost everybody was fishing “dry-dropper setup”, which was very similar to “float fishing”, you use one big bushy dry-fly and two suspended egg-flies, you cast, sit on a chair, and if the dry-fly sinks, you strike. In my opinion, it is not fly-fishing and we have to thing about it in the future. However, I have to admit that I also succumbed to this “dark side” of the fly-fishing second day. In the fourth round I was casting 30 m and pulling my lures. Next to me was fishing a local uncle, he was sitting on chair, casting the float with fluo-green eggs 5 metres far from the shore and in 15 minutes he was leading 4:1 … so I also picked up the same setup and got another 6 fish.
I really liked the friendly atmosphere during both days, we have a lot of friends in Slovakia and we were nice group from the Czech Republic including Luboš Roza and Milan Čubík completed by Dutch Rene Koops as usually, hope to be back next year.