Independence Day on Poprad

Today we have a holiday in Poland - Independence Day. I planned a trip to Dunajec river, in attempt to catch Danubian salmon on streamers. When I arrived to known spot early in the morning, I found there's already someone fishing the run. River was very low. Dunajec Gołkowice 137 cm and 14,1 m3/s. I fished this run with streamers when it was 50 m3/s and it was awesome. Many big trout on streamers. But now, it looked too skinny and not attractive. 

I drove to the Mostki, to the deepest hole in this part of Dunajec. I spent couple of cours, casting heavy streamer on intermediate line with 9wt rod. No luck.  Since it's a holiday, I wanted to celebrate it with some real fish, not just grass and sticks caught in the water. 

Luckily, I had my car packed with various fly rods for different conditions and methods. I headed to the Poprad river , which is close to Gołkowice.  Poprad also was low. Measurement  20 cm, 9,85 m3/s at Stary Sącz, and 98 cm, 6,58 m3/s at Muszyna.

On the way, I stopped in McDonalds for breakfast. Then I drove straight to the already known location, where's many fish. Soon, I caught my first barbel for today. 

Unfortunately, that deep hole has some garbage on the bottom, and I lost many nymphs there. I pulled out two fish from it. But it pissed me off, when I lost all 4 of my favourite barbel nymphs with head 5mm. 

I decided to switch location and find water more suitable for euro nymphing, with less snags. I walked down the river, and looked into the water in polarized glasses.

I found a run , where's a lot of barbels in shallow water. The depth varied from knee level to my waist. I've seen schools of fish, and tried sight fishing for them. They are spooky, but not too much.

The water was very clear, so I was able to see in which direction fish moving, and cast in advance in front of them. And this worked! 

The place is a bit noisy because of trains, but it didn't ruin the fishing.

In shallow run it's much easy to fsh with nymph, because you see where is fish and where to cast. I caught few nice specimens.

This was the biggest one, and it fought hard. Barbels are serious fighters, even if they are 35-40 cm. This one measured nearly 51 cm.

In the meantime, my mother called on Whatsup while I was on the river. I shown to her freshly caught barbel. 

At 14:00 I bored and decided to find another location. I jumped in my car, and drove highway, which goes all the way along the river.

One place I found visually attractive, so I decided to stop there. 

There's state border between Poland and Slovakia, which goes along the river. The footbridge connects two countries.

No border guards there, no soldiers, no illegal immigrants sleeping in tents. Just sign that this is state border.

The bridge itself is quite elegant. Nice piece of architecture, which fits into the surroundings.

I parked my car on the curb side, and walked down the river. The place looks great.

There's deep hole below the riffle, which looks very promising. Especially for big predatory fish, called Hucho hucho or Danubian salmon.

But i didn't have streamer rod with me. I tried my nymphing rod, eventually snagged and lost two files in this hole. 

Above the hole, there's a riffle, where one can cross the river to the other side,  at lowest level like as it is now. 

This was my last stop. I didn't catch anything from it, but want to visit it more on my next trips.

I think, this holiday was great!  Many barbels caught, and one of them is my personal best.