Autumnal fly fishing workshop
After the return from Slovakia I had to a little work, and we were finishing preparation of our annual autumnal workshop. This year, we invited 16 participants from England, Belgium, Denmark and Germany, mostly our old good friends. We all met in Herbertov on Sunday evening, Karel shop was open, beer was cold, river looked great and weather forecast was promising, so what more could we wish for? We started with the traditional Czech drink called Fernet stock made from secret herbs (in fact we call it “coffin varnish”) and with the introductory lesson. My team was composed by Ivan Vančura, member of the Czech fly fishing team and individual European champion from 2011, member of the gold Czech team in Euro 2018, Martin Musil jr., Youth World Champion and recent coach of the Czech Youth Fly Fishing Team, Jiří Pejchar, manager of the Czech Fly Fishing Team and me. Roman Heimlich had to go to Brussels because of work, and he joined us on Thursday morning.
On Monday morning after breakfast we started with demonstration of nymphing technique, preparation of leaders, and fishing along to Penzion Herbertov, next we moved to Rožmberk to the “catch and release” section, which was stocked by decent rainbows one week ago. Fish were cooperating, so almost everybody caught a good fish, and after lunch in the Hotel Růže we spread in the Vltava river under Rožmberk. In every pool was a rainbow, in ripples we caught some brown trout, brook trout and also some coarse fish, occasionally grayling. Mostly on nymphs, but I also got few fish on dry fly. Barry caught barbel, however, he caught barbel almost every day 
In the evening we had firsts fly tying lesson in the new club.
On Tuesday we sent two groups to Warm Vltava to check the activity of grayling and trout and they really enjoyed the day in the pure nature. Me and Ivan stayed in Vltava and we were fishing upstream from hotel. In the morning, the fishing was a little slow, but at about eleven o´clock we started catching nice browns. For lunch, I made sandwiches at the river bank and we moved to the trophy section in Vyšší Brod. There we get few decent rainbows and after the great coffee and cake in the Restaurant Inge we finished under the dam of the Lake Lipno II, where we found rainbow paradise
On Wednesday, two groups decided to fish again in Vyšší Brod under dam for big rainbows, and I took my group to the upper part of Devil stones. This day was not so successful, as water flowing from Lipno I to the Devil stones was relatively warm and green and activity of fish was nothing special, and moreover the discharge in the Vltava river from Vyšší Brod was increased to the 20 m3/s at about lunch time. We found, that owner of the big water power-plant in the dam of the lake Lipno I finished reconstruction of turbines after 3 years and they had to test them, so they released more water till Friday evening. It was nothing to do, but we still have reserve plans, and after lunch (meat loaf sandwiches we moved more downstream, when the water was more clear. Two groups moved to fish the Malše river, which was in ideal condition.
Thursday was the resting day, guys from England decided to visit Hanák Shop in České Budějovice and also Český Krumlov, the historical town under Unesco heritage, smaller group visited Malše river, and we also tried to fish upstream from Herbertov in the area between islands, which is fishable also in the higher flow, and everybody caught few nice browns. In the evening, Jiří prepared a surprise, he bought sausages and we roasted them on the camp fire, which is Czech tradition. Ben made Karel´s day as he bought a lot of tungsten beads in shop
On Friday the weather was cold and rainy, so we decided to go to Warm Vltava in Šumava Mountains, after the exhausting journey through the pineapple jungle we reached river which looked great, and we caught many coarse fish, few nice graylings and browns, Ben caught decent pike on roach hooked on nymph and forest was full of boletus. In the evening we had small closing party, and we were preparing for the Rožmberský fly fishing cup, which was held on Saturday under Rožmberk. The preparation was probably too intensive so nobody from our team was on the podium, so hopefully next time
Also thanks to the exemplary care from the hotel staff, we really enjoyed this week, my team did, in my opinion, its best, and we hosted great company of friendly and enthusiastic people. We are looking forward to the September 2019.
