Adventures of fly angler in Poland

 Brzegi is artifical lake in the city limits of Kraków, actually a sand quarry converted to fishery. It is regularly stocked with rainbow trout as sports fishery. Recently there was stocking 2 days before, a good sign that trout will be very active. I arrived to the water at 15:00. There were splashes of trout in the middle, far from the bank. First I tried to cast a streamer on sinking line, without ay effects. Then I noticed that trout eating small mayflies. I switched to dry fly line, and attached medium-size CDC mayfly imitation, to match the hatch. After few hits, I hooked first rainbow trout. Not bad start. Fish were actively feeding on mayflies. I had few takes, but fish wasnt hooked reliably. Second one was slightly bigger and nicer.  Stocked fish are all of merely the same size, 35-40 cm. There were also big ones, but they were jumping in the middle of the lake, out of reach of my casting ability. After 16:00 sun started to go dogn. Too early, it looks like today ther...

Skawa is one of the closest to my home rivers. Unfortunately, it's always dirty in October due to large quantity of sediments discharged from the dam. The water level was 109 cm and 6,31 m3/s, very low.  The thing I do love in October is the color of the surroundings. The forest is burning with orange flame.  I started with nymphing rod, Ego Competitor 11' 2/3 wt.  The weather was shiny.  There were no bites for a long time.  Then I caught and released only one brown trout.  I covered my favourite run "under the rock" with nymphs and dry fly. No reaction in two hours. It was really frustrating. Then I returned to the bridge, which is the most popular place. There was 3 men around, casting dry fly. I've seen that small mayflies started to hatch, and fish were picking it. Most of the hatch occurred in the shallow knee-deep water. Here's the most frustrating part. I didn't catch anything on dry fly :-(   Nothing. There were couple of attacks on my fl...

After previous rendezvous with barbels on Poprad river, i wanted to build on that success . Weather was sunny, up to +7 during mid of the day, but early in the morning was -1 C. I dressed up in triple fleece layer under my waders. The river was low and clear, 126 cm and 12,8 m3/s at Stary Sacz, 102 cm and 8m3/s at Muszyna.  I arrived to Barcice at 9:00 and stared to the river from the bridge, trying to spot the fish. I've seen nothing, but place looks "fishy". There's deep hole below the bridge, and nice slow pockets around.  I fished the main current, and pockets around concrete bridge peers. Only one small brown trout lured by my hare's ear nymph.   I alked downstream. 200-300 m below the bridge, river became shallow, and it's easy to cross to the other side at such level.  There's nice, wide run with 1-1,5 m depth and slow pace. i think it's exactly what barbels would like to live in.  But , no contact with fish detected. I returned to my car and de...

 Barbel is a hard to reach fish for me, almost mystical. I caught a few small ones , by accident when fishing for trout. But when I tried to catch barbel on purpose, I had zero results.  According to recent reports from Poprad river, there's were decent numbers of barbels caught in September. Autumn is probably the best time for that fish. Rivers get low and clear, and they are easier to reach for fly fishermen.Barbels are bottom feeders. They eat various organisms living on the river bottom - insect larva (especially caddis and mayfly larva), mollusks, worms, occasionally fish fry. Giving the nature of barbel, the most reliable way to catch it on artifical fly is Czech nymphing method with heavy nymph rolling on the bottom. Due to technical limitations, depths more than 1x rod length are out of reach for fly fisherman. So, the best time for barbels is early autumn, when rivers are at lowest level, and barbels feeding in runs of moderate depth 1-1,5 m. I arrived to the river a...