As every September, my friends Grant and Kevin arrived to enjoy 10 days of fishing on Vltava river. This year, they brought their mate Keith. We met in Hanák Shop in České Budějovice and after quick coffee which cooked Franta we headed to Rožmberk. They stayed in Rožmberk for five days and next they moved to Volary to fish Warm Vltava. I was fishing with them for two days, one in Vltava under Vyšší Brod and one in Lenora, as usually. As Keith was here for first time, I paid him a little more, but he was complete angler, so I only gave him some advice concerning fishing in our rivers and also concerning working with rod while nymphing. It was great fun, I as usually get great crisp-sandwiches for lunch, and we caught a lot of fish of different species (brown trout, brook trout, rainbow trout, grayling, chub, dace, roach, bleak and perch), both on nymphs and dries. Mainly dry fly fishing in Warm Vltava was interesting, it was cold weather with wind and clear sky, which is usually not the best for dry fly, and the fish were rising in waves, and they were very selective. But the olive emerger size 20 was the solution of problems

The bad luck was, that I lost my fly box with jig nymphs somewhere during first day, but I took it not as a tragedy, but as a great chance for upgrade I´m looking for long winter evenings at vice.

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The fishing started slowly comparing with last season due to longer winter, it is similar probably in the whole Europe. I spent the opening day April 16th with friends at Květoňov lake, we were there just before the 6 a.m. The nice mild weather and the dawn on the eastern sky welcomed about 50 fishermen, all banks were occupied like during competitions and on the water surface was traffic of boats and belly boats.  Fish were taking from really first casts, everybody was satisfied and everybody caught a good fish, the biggest trout was caught by Franta Hanak (as usually :-)) The best line was Di3 or fast glass and the best flies were lures or boobies in light colours, surprisingly the  black/green combination was not good. I caught majority of fish on yellow lure with silver bead. They were also caught come big pikes, but majority of pikes were parading along the banks without any interest in our flies as they were preparing for spawning. I saw one crocodile of the length about 1,3 m followed by two smaller males.
I returned after few days, weather was very warm but light breeze promised nice fishing. After few missed takes we found that fish search more for natural food as there occurred an occasional hatch of lake olives and olive buzzers. And probably all of them had been already caught by a lure. I caught about 10 fish (both rainbow and brook trout) on black and olive buzzers, the best method was to pull flies on hover or slow glass line and change speed of retrieve, the take usually came during the speed-up. So it was nice afternoon and good practice for England, to which we are flying in the end of April.

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I also visited the trophy fishery Vltava 24, we stocked again really good fish and the icing on the cake is brown trout in weight 3-4 kg. As the flow in river is still high, the best method is streamer, I caught majority of fish on pink or white combinations. The first rises of olives and sedges hopefully attract fish to surface, I saw some occasionally rising fish, but I was to lazy to change rod and I caught two of them on nymph. I took one rainbow home and he had in stomach buds of trees, so it was probably the reason why he was rising. Lets tie the brown/green buds . I also found nest of kingfisher.

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I got the hot message that the Czech republic was approved by the Congress of FIPS MOUCHE to organise The World Fly Fishing Championship 2014, so if you would like to see top fishermen in water, come in May 2014 to South Bohemia. The schedule of the championship will be similar like the EFFC 2011, if you are interested find the link on the main page.

I spent two weeks of holiday at Lipno lake with my family and I also managed some fishing. I visited twice trophy stretch at Vltava 29 under dam of Lipno. During second visit I was accompanied by Bruno, who got permit as the birthday present. I have to say that Bruno is already good flyfisherman. Fishing was not easy due to warmer water and due to the weed, which was two times more extensive comparing situation in June. But we caught fish in every suitable place, also some nice fish, our catch included perch (Bruno caught only perch during first hour , rainbow, roach, brook trout and brown trout. Bruno lost one big brown under weed, he had had no experience with this conditions. After strike you can not give to fish any centimetre :-). The best fly was pheasant tail nymph with pink bead, in the afternoon worked also the dry fly. Fish were not actively rising, but they could not resist bigger sedges and emergers. Bigger fish we found in the deep under weed and it was question of right casting technique to get nymph to this zone without snagging in weed.

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