Bream on fly

 Today I went to Brzegi in the evening.  I wanted to catch fish with tenkara first, because it is my new passion. But it was very windy, with small waves on the lake.  I walked along the shoreline to find a place, free of wind.   Still there was a wind, but moderate.  There were no strikes on tenkara.

I had a conversation with a man, who caught 2 rainbow trout on nymph on the fly rod.  I rigged my favorite hopper-dropper setup.  The fish were jumping from time to time, but no reaction to my fly.

I decided to go home, but stopped at small wooden pier near the parking spot. There is corner of the lake, always full of fish. This place is shallow, and have rich vegetation.  Previous time, I caught a few trout there.

I stayed for a while on the pier, and fished with tiny nymph (hook 18) suspended under dry fly. The distance of nymph from the surface was about 50 cm.  

There were bites of small fish (likely, rudd) from time to time.  But suddenly, I noticed that my dry fly, served as indicator, disappeared. I set the hook, and it was a big fish!  Something really big, but probably not trout. The fish was stubborn and heavy, but I carefully brought it to the net.

What's that? Bream! Abramis brama.  This fish is very common in stillwater and big lowland rivers, even in the Baltic .  

It usually very hard to catch on fly, because they are bottom feeders. They dig bottom with their nose, feeding on insect larva, small mollusks and worms.  But this bream took fly in the middle of the water column, although probably close to the bottom, because this piece of water is shallow.

I never caught a bream on the fly rod. Especially such big.  Very precious fish for fly fisherman.