Otava river – river of disappointment or awakening?

Říjen 17, 2014 - 5:16 pm Komentáře nejsou povoleny

p1140134 I had no time to make reports in summer, so I will be brief to summarise summer activities. I attended three competitions in Otava river in late summer. In the middle of August, two open cups  ”Milan Janus Memorial” and “West Bohemia Cup” took part in two days in two different stretches of the river. Both competition had similar schedule which I introduced few years ago, that 44 competitors is divided to the two groups and in every round one half of people fish and the second half of people controls, and we fish and judge three rounds.

I was practising with Roman on Friday before competitions, fishing was good, we caught many fish on nymphs, wets and also dries. Roman decided to try to catch some perch on streamer as in competition stretch were also deep pools hosting abundant perch population and every fish counted.  He hooked small perch and when he was pulling it, out of the blue, he saw a crocodile mouth bolting down the poor fish. The pike parked just under his legs, so Roman waited a little and struck. He was very lucky as the perch with the point fly was away and pike was hanging on the dropper. After 15 minutes, fish was in the net, Roman brought it to the bank, I measured 69 cm. I was looking for the camera, Roman was packing his rod and we were talking about a recipe … and fish started to get bored and turned to side and escaped, she was quick like an eel and we were not able to catch it :-)

I was fishing not bad in both competitions, but in good pegs I won, average pegs I made an average result and in bad peg I lost, so I made twice average result. It was generally caught not many fish, however, the first round I won with 16 graylings caught on dry fly, later was for victory enough ten fish and in the afternoon five. In every round I lost few fish which could lift me up and this was the difference between me and successful competitors, they did not lose this fish. Every round took only 75 minutes, so there was no time to test anything and in 100 – 150 m long pegs was no time to cover whole space properly, so it was necessary to choice the best place in actual conditions and to concentrate on it and therefore the local knowledge was essential.

In the last round on Saturday I caught nice barbel of length 74 cm which took me 30 minutes of rare time, but I decided to try to get it as I knew that I lost previous round and had no chance for top ten and I it was really great fish. Sage SLT size 3 and Hanak Competiton fluorocarbon of diameter 0,10 mm were thoroughly tested :-) . Competitions had friendly spirit, both my judge and also Michael, who was fishing same peg after me, waited before I got the fish to the net :-)

When I was controlling Michal, I made interesting photo-set how he caught nice grayling on dry.

I stayed in Strakonice town at my friends and we visited Bagpipe festival, it was amazing, in every pub was and bagpipe music band from whole world :-)
West Bohemian Cup took part more upstream on Sunday and weather was very cold and rainy, fishing was even harder and some people blanked in the afternoon. I had similar result like on Saturday. For me was my result in competition disappointment but also challenge for next year as I liked the competitions and I would like to be more successful there, it is mainly question of concentration and good resolutions. Result was nothing special but I found good flies which were important later when we had in the same river the autumnal round of our Second league which I fish in the Team Hanák .

The autumnal round of the Second league took part in the first weekend of September. As we totally spoiled spring round we had a lot to atone and we took the competition very seriously. First day of competition was sunny with clear low water but storm coming in the afternoon stopped activity of fish and night rain coloured water to the chocolate colour. I was fishing on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday morning and I had two very difficult pegs and did my best to get a good results for our team in these tough conditions as well as Pepa, but Franta and Tobi were more lucky and won both their rounds, so finally we won the autumnal round by big difference and finally gained third place in total.  On Sunday morning in the chocolate water I caught good grayling on a Czech nymph with red rib, after my round finished, I gave the rod to Franta and he caught on it another 4 graylings in already cleaning water. This is the team spirit which I like.
When I was judging, I had time to make some pictures of flowers flowering along the river. On the last picture, there is the very important grayling from Sunday morning.

Comments are closed.