In the middle of September we organised our traditional competition in Vltava River under Rožmberk. Czech A-team was competing in the World and therefore there was a chance to get a good result for the rest of competitors. I helped with preparation of draw and database as usually and I also tied some flies. I prepared three rods: one standard nymphing, one dry-dropper and one with dry fly.

I started in beat B11, place looked well, I started from the upper border and caught first fine fish under one big stone by the third cast. I was gradually fishing the most promising places, including the opposite bank, and about 15 minutes before the end I had 9 fish, so I decided to try the best pool with the dry-dropper rod. In 10 minutes I had no take, so I picked up the nymphing rod again and caught last fish just before the end. The 10 minutes with the different rod cost me probably a medal, if I had continued nymphing, I would probably have caught one more fish … Libor had also 10 fish and his biggest fish was 1 cm longer then mine, so I was third in the session. In the next round, I was keeping my nymphing rod whole the session and 9 fish brought me second place. In the last session, I was fishing one of the best places in Sector A, there was cascade of pools at the opposite bank. Tomáš, who was fishing before me, caught 11 fish on nymph, so decided to try dry fly to have better chance to catch fish in shallow parts under trees. But it was not good and I wasted 15 minutes, so I took the nymphing rod and finished with 7 fish and Libor had also 7 fish and his biggest fish was 2 cm longer then mine … In total, I was 7th, which is not bad, but one more fish or few centimetres could gave me bronze medal, it is always about one fish or one centimetre. And in this style of competition, when sessions take only 75 minutes, the most important thing is to make proper decisions.

We caught 1088 fish, there was caught few nice trout but the majority were  coarse fish like dace, chub and roach, which is not good for trout water.

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I had free Sunday, weather was nice, so I decided to visit the Vltava River, my plan was to start a little downstream and next to go to Vyšší Brod for the afternoon hatch of olives. I passed Český Krumlov and stopped for a moment at the bridge, which creates border between the fisheries Vltava 26 and Vltava 27. Two fish rising just under the bridge pulled me from my car and after few minutes of observation I spotted another three rising rainbows, so I did no waiting for anything and run to the river. The first fish I caught on dry fly, it was rainbow of about 30 cm, but I found out, that fish were moving during rising, so it was difficult to localise them and to catch them with the dry fly. I decided to try wet fly, which I use mainly for fishing of rising rainbows (I observed similar behaviour also in Vltava 24, rainbows always move, sometimes you can thing, that there is rising five fish in the pool and it is only one). I made cats from three different March-brown-style wet flies size 14, I used tippet of 0,14 mm and covered first rising fish. The fish responded immediately and during playing of it, I saw another circle on the surface. I had great 30 minutes of fishing, I caught about 10 bows. Suddenly I saw another two fishermen next to me, one was upstream and the second one was downstream. Both were fishing with floaters and worms and they almost surrounded me, after first few seconds of surprise I realised, that I was fishing in the non-trout section of river where life baits are allowed.  I decided to move, firstly I don´t like so intimate society, and secondly, there was no more rising fish. When I sat to the car, I had call from Jaromír, who was fishing in Vyšší Brod, and he told me, that water discharge in river was increased and he is moving downstream to me. We met at another good spot, but I was not fishing anymore, the wet fly session satisfied me, so I was only observing Jaromír for a while, enjoyed a little sunbathing in the late autumnal sun and I went home.

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During summer, I prefer for fishing Vltava 27 to Vltava 28, there is less canoes in the morning, and also fish stock is more variable. You can catch brown trout, rainbow trout, grayling, brook trout, perch, roach, chub, dace …  I visited this water few times, and also with friends.
Dan Svrček, former member of the Czech Team, always comes with family for one week holiday in the end of summer, and we always go together in the morning to Vltava 27.
And Michal Rypl will join our team for the Erik Eikre Invitational competition in October, so we had the first practice
Michal made a nice video from those morning session

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Daniel asked me to help his team during practice before championship. They don´t need to learn fishing, but local information and some tips for tactics were hopefully useful, we very enjoyed this few days, which were for me the last relax before the madness, and they gained bronze medal It was great experience for me to see them, how hard were they practising, how they were cooperating. The only problem was to get for them T-shirts in a children size

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I took part at our traditional and very prestigious competition on Vltava river under Rožmberk called Rožmberský cup”. It is organised by our club, so I always help with organisation, I usually count results and this year I also helped to mark pegs. Two hours of crawling through the bushes was good practice for competition. Competition hosted 40 competitors including members of the Czech A Team, which gained 2nd place at last World Championship held in Slovakia two weeks ago. Competition is composed by 6 rounds of 75 minutes, everybody fish 3 rounds and judges 3 rounds.

 I was practising on Vltava with Jiří Pejchar two weeks ago, but I have not enough time as it was windy on Lipno lake so I only confirmed to myself, that my flies were working, and quickly moved to windsurfing. Windsurfing is just now my favourite hobby, so if there are suitable conditions, I have to go. And it was big day, I was planning for four hours and finally I was totally exhausted. The picture is nice that I´m drying both fly fishing and windsurfing gear, so it had to be a great day

During competition, there was rain whole day long, so I made no a single picture. I was fishing in first group, I caught  in the first round 19 fish, in the second 18 and in the last one 11 fish, mainly dace, chub, roach and brown trout. I was fishing mainly with 18 size nymphs and also with dries, leader 0,10 mm Hanak competition fluorocarbon. I finished in the 7th place just behind members of the Czech Team, which was not a bad result. Nice day with friendly people in the great place.

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I need some repair of one rod and I took it to Pavel Kneifel last Sunday and we connected my visit with fishing in Vltava 27. It was cold and rainy whole day, but it was not bad, I caught about 25 fish, half of them were 2 years old graylings, hope they will survive winter, next May they could have over 30 cm. Three rainbows followed me home  I saw few rising fish and I was not lazy and replaced nymphs by dry. It was probably nice end of the season, today was whole day frost and it is not for my old bones.

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I got an interesting e-mail from Andy Kapral from South Africa in May, the subject of the e-mail was “I dream to fish in Czech rivers”. Andy has Czech origin, his parents escaped from our country from communist in 1969 and they met in Vienna and after  few years in Austria they got visa to South Africa. Andy was born already in Vienna, so in fact he is Austrian . After the Velvet Revolution in Czech republic in 1989, Andy has visited our country for several times, but this year he also planned to fish our rivers. He is keen fly fisherman and he fish mainly for yellow fish in SA. We communicated by e-mail in English, but he speaks good Czech.  He was with his wife on the round trip across the Europe and he had only two days for fishing as he visited Český Krumlov in the first week of July. I was on family holiday at Lipno lake, so we arranged one morning session.
I picked Andy up at the hotel at 5:30 as it was expected very hot day and more over the Vltava river is  full of canoes in summer. We headed to Rožmberk as other smaller rivers were high after night storm. After our workshop, there were still stocked rainbows in the C&R stretch, and we had more time for fishing, as canoeist usually start in Vyšši Brod and journey to Rožmberk takes 2-3 hours. I brought also my reserve waders for Andy, as he had no enough place for it in his luggage.
We  started under the weir in Rožmberk at about six. I recognised that Andy is experienced fishermen, he caught first rainbow immediately after short explanation and demonstration of the nymphing technique. But he remained in one place too long. I explained him, that while nymphing in this bigger rivet,  it is necessary to cover as much water as possible to find active fishes. He replied, that in SA, yellow fish is very shy, so after you came to water, you have to stay 15 minutes without any movement to wait for fish and next you can catch something.
We “cleaned out” the space under the weir and moved slowly downstream. At about 10 o’clock the river was unfishable due to canoes, so we a little observed pretty Czech girls in swimsuits and finished first half of fishing. It was nice start of the day, we caught about 40 fish of 9 species altogether between us, I caught brown trout, rainbow trout, brook trout, perch, roach, dace, grayling, chub, bleak and my really first fish was gudgeon

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Next we moved to Vltava 29, I would like to show Andy one of my favourite river and enable him to catch some native brown trout. As it was sunny and hot, I choose steeper stretch covered by trees, which is a little difficult for fishing, but I expected, that fish could be there a little less shy.
(Andy caught squirrel by the second cast   and he was going to snap the leader, but I told him, that he could not leave my secret patterns at river, so he climbed the pine a got the flies back ).
We started in a bigger pool,  I sent Andy to the mouth under rifles and I crossed the river in the end of the pool. In this river, if I go there with a friend, I always prefer to go along  both banks slowly upstream, we both can fish our half of river and we can compare results and talk about fishing. Andy got nice brown immediately after the squirrel and his face shoved, that he is amassed by this peace of pure nature. We started with team of two jig nymphs, next I tried also wet flies and big dries, all methods were good, but we caught no bigger fish than 30 cm, for bigger fish was to bright. At about 1 p.m. we had to leave as I promised to kids a bicycle trip for the afternoon.

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Andy, thanks for nice fishing morning and see you next year in workshop.