Ultimate Tenkara trip. Day 3: Janosik Cup and afterparty

 On Sunday there was fly fishing competition Janosik Cup, also the championship of the Nowy Sącz angling club, and young anglers championship.

The competition was in different categories: fly fishing, tenkara, youth.  There was only 6 tenkara fishermen.  The fishing organised in pairs, selected by draw. Each pair was given a measuring device and paper card to record catches.  Only trout above 25 cm (both brown and rainbow) were counted, other fish disqualified. 

I was sceptical about this, because I've seen only small trout in this river. Also, there was heavy rain in the night, and the river was dirty, with brown water color and clarity about 30 cm. 

I was in the team with young fishermen pair: Kristian and Angelina.  They came from the city Torun to this event.

We loaded into my car and headed upstream to Koniówka. We fished for hour and half without a single strike. Later we moved to Chocholów.

We fished the river section between two bridges in town. There is chain of rapids and small plunge pools. Angelina caught one small brown trout and had one fish in her catch record.  I caught nothing.  

We fished until 13:00, then we returned to the camping. On the way we met some photo-friendly cows.

Then there was lunch , beer, and decoration of the competition winners.  I had a talk with two Macedonian guests. They told me how good fishing in Macedonia is, compared to Poland. One of them owns a hotel near the river, and this river is full of brown trout of decent size. Also Macedonia has very beautiful nature, and fishing licenses are pretty cheap for Europe. They invited me to go there for a vacation. I'm seriously thinking about that.

After decoration ceremony and 3 beers, I rested well and wanted to go back to the river to take a rematch for fishless competition session.

I drove short distance from the camping to one of the artificial waterfalls on the river, in the town limits.

After 10 minutes I got a rainbow trout, on pink "parkinson" nymph. Why I didn't go there for competition? This is the section of the river which had the most fish. We with Kristian just picked wrong location. 

The river looked dirty like this, with brownish water, visibility is about my knee level. 

I changed nymph to red tag with red beadhead. I got second rainbow trout on it. Probably bigger than previous, because I can't bring it to the net quickly. The fish fought hard and won't give up. Unfortunately, I lost it when attempted to grab with the net. 

I changed nymph again, to orange scud imitation. Very heavy nymph I designed myself, to fish plunge pools under waterfalls. Few years ago I had success with his nymph on the river Vah in Slovakia. 

Wow, another rainbow! Now on the scud.  This fish was bigger, and fought hard.

Let it go! 

The rod I used in this session is Nissin Zerosum Oni Honryu 395. It proven to be good for trout 40-50 cm in size.  The tippet is 0,145mm or 5,5X. 

In the end, I fished the run "Under the wires".

 There's overhead wires above the river. If you cast your nymph, and don't look what's above the head, your fly may rest on the wire forever. I lost mine too, and there were few of them. 

After that disaster, I stopped fishing and drove to the camp. The camping was dismounted. I thanked the organiser and returned to my hotel.  The first tenkara festival in Poland ended.  Guests are gone to their homes. I stayed for one more night to fish one more day tomorrow.