Adventures of fly angler in Poland

 Today was a perfect winter day for spey casting training. Air temperature + 3 C, no wind. River was 145 cm and 9,90 m3/s, just perfect conditions. I came to the Raba at 11:00. The river banks were still frosted. I assembled my double handed rod CND Black Spey 13'6" 7/8/9wt, rigged it with Vision Ace 525 grain shooting head. Practiced switch cast, single spey and snake roll for some time.  On the opposite bank, I notices pieces of plastic or cloth garbage, which spoiled the view of the river. I spotted that crap in my previous visit, too, but now decided to remove it. There was deep channel between me and the opposite bank, in the deepest part it was above my waist level. There should be a fish in this hole.  But im not for fishing today.  I reached the tree on the bank and removed garbage. On the way, I collected more big pieces of trash and loaded into my car, with intention to discard it on the way home.  Now, the river without trash looks much better! Raba i...

 I opened year 2022 with spey casting session on Raba.  I took 2 rods with me: full size double hand rod CND Black Spey 13'6 7/8/9, and trout spey rod Winston Boron ii TH-MS 11' 4wt. The place I chose for casting is section of Raba river in Nieznanowice.  This part is good for spey casting for two reasons. First, river is not very narrow, and has enough space for full size spey rod. Second, there's fine gravel on the bottom, easy to wade, which allows to stand in the middle of the river, and practice left-hand and right-hand spey casts. River level was 247 cm and flow 10,5 m3/s. I started with CND. First, I rigged it with Airflo Scandi Compact 34' 540 grain (blue), and 15' tapered leader. I tried single spey, double spey and snake roll, from both sides of the river.  It seems like I lost my ability to spey cast. I struggled to make a narrow loop, and too often, my leader collapsed a the end of the cast, instead of unroll straight. Second shooting head I tried Vision...