Erik Eikre Invitational, Glomma river, in the gold colour
Me and Honza Vender again attended in colours of the Hanák Competition Team the friendly competition organised by our friend Erik Eikre on the Glomma River, Norway. Franta Hanák could not go this year because of busy work, but he equipped us by the brand new Hanák Superb XP nymphing rods. We asked our mate Michal Rypl to complete the team, our ambitions were naturally high after the fourth place in the last year. The journey was a little stressful as I was wrong about the time of the departure of the flight for an hour and we left our home by an hour later …. but we caught the flight, pick up of the rented car in Oslo was without problem, Michal proved to be a great driver, and in the evening we met Erik and other friends in the Telneset Fishing Lodge.
The Glomma River looked great, only the morning temperatures under zero were not pleasant, so we had longer breakfasts and the air temperature reached zero at about 10 O’clock and with enough of caffeine, chocolate and rum in blood, the fishing was endurable . First day we were practising the river, we moved a little downstream from the camp and the local style of fishing for grayling was mainly for Michal something different to his experience from little home waters. We caught first fish immediately, both on nymphs and squirmies, the sun shone through the clouds, Honza brought for lunch great sausages, I expect that we hooked about 60 fish between us, we also caught few fish just under 50 cm limit, so we very enjoyed the first day. The first day of practice we focused on the adaptation to the local conditions, we tested our flies and mainly our equipment, 0,12 mm fluorocarbon was strong enough, new rods and hooks worked well, and I did not lose any single fish during the day.
Second day we were practising the lake, which was something unknown and challenging for us, we have no grayling in still-waters in our country. I get important tips from Franta Hanák and Martin Drož and also from Erik and Nuno, so we had a rough plan what to do. Weather changed to a small blizzard, the snow showers when snow was falling horizontally were changing rapidly with the sunny periods, even the journey to the lake on the summer tiers was real adrenaline. But we found a sheltered bay in the west coast of the lake and Honza caught a nice fish on the very first cast. We found how to get fish close to the bank and also in the distance and we left lake with the clear tactic for the competition.
Last day of the practice we returned to the river to prove our experience and flies and also to a little work on the team tactic, which is very important in the river of this size. After the lunch we decided to go fishing to the place at road, where almost all teams had been practising, to test fishing after the high fishing pressure which is the most important thing in all competitions. In the first round, everybody catches fish, but the final result is always created in the last rounds. In the evening I attended the captains meeting and draw and I had “lucky hand” to take relatively good rotation starting by two rounds in the river.
For the competition days, the weather improved and it was relatively warm, however, it was very strong wind mainly during the first day. I started with Honza on the beat A4, which was not bad, but fish were at the opposite bank and we could not beat Nuno and his team in the beat A7, we had to go for every fish at least 50 m, while in the beat A7 you could catch fish almost from the bank (I expect, that we spent 30 minutes by fishing and 90 minutes by running , but 41 fish and the second place in the sector A were good start of the competition. The second round was won by Honza and Michal with 46 fish from the beat A6 and we moved to the lake in good mood. In the lake, we had a nice rugged beat B7, with few peninsulas and bays. We started upwind, Michal was fishing close to the bank and I was fishing behind him with the intermediate line to catch fish from the distance, in 90 minutes we went through the whole peg and next we returned to the best places, and we finished with 21 fish which meant second victory in the sector and the first place of our team after the first day (2+1+1, 108 fish caught), and also the second place for me in the continuous individual ranking (2+1).
Second day we started in the lake in the beat B4 (on the way to the lake we saw nice dear and moose), I was fishing with Honza and we again gained the victory in the sector with 13 fish (I also caught nice white fish – Corregonus, in Czech is called “síh”, in Norwegian “sik” . Next Honza and Michal caught 8 fish in relatively difficult place B1 which was enough for the second place in the sector, to be serious, it was impossible to beat Anita and Christian who were perfectly fishing in the beat B2. We moved to the river for the last round full of hopes, I was fishing with Michal in the beat A5, and the A4 was occupied by Nuno and Anita. It was strong fight till the very last minute of competition, and we lost battle only by 2 fish 32/30 , but the second place in the sector was enough to win the team competition (2+1+1+1+2+2, 159 fish) and I gained the gold between the individuals (2+1+1+2, 61 fish) while Honza was second (3+1+3+1, 63 fish).
To summarise, I thing, that selection of flies was not too important. We had well balanced equipment, new Hanák Superb XP rods as well as older Superlight worked great. In the river, we used the rods size 3, and 0,12 mm flurocarbon HC, in the lake I used Sage Z-Axis size 5 for longer cats, and we used the 3-size rods for the fishing close to the banks, I used 0,16 and 0,14 mm fluorocarbon. We did not use squirmies in the river, but smaller nymphs. In the lake, we had good tactic when we covered all fish both close to the bank and from the distance. The most important things both for the river and the lake were “keep tactic” and “move and move and move”. It is always the same, to win any competition, you have to fish well and also you have to have the big portion of luckiness
Big thanks to Erik for inviting us to this friendly and well organised event, his passion for improvement of all the details is inspiring (I thing, that organisers of many fly fishing championships at the European and World level could learn a lot from him), and his new application for counting and presenting of results can bring new fresh air to the fly fishing competitions, also big thanks other people staying in the Telneset camp and attending the competition for creating the friendly atmosphere for all the week, simply “tusen takk og vi får se neste år”!!!
Here you can find links to videos which was made during our trip by Michal.