Bosnia - grayling eldorado. Day 3

 This time our guides decided to show us different river, Sana. Ribnik is tributary to Sana, both rivers join near the village Velje. After the confluence, Sana carries twice much water than Ribnik. It's pretty wide mountain river in some places. There are some very deep holes, which potentially can hold the queen of Balkans mountain streams - the huchen.  But it wasn't our goal, we were targeting mainly graylings with rather light gear. Fly rods in classes 2-3-4 and 7X or 0,10 mm tippet. In such very clear and low water, like it is now, thinnest tippets and smallest flies on hooks 18-24 were preferred. 

The river section featured few deep depressions and pools, so it was natural choice for contact nymphing, or euro nymphing.   I didn't have a proper fly rod for that, so I used my tenkara rod, Daiwa Expert LT36 for such method.  Colored level mono line slightly less than rod length, tippet ring on the end, and tippet. The whole rig is about 1,5x of the rod length, or slightly less. With tenkara you only can have fixed length rig, so you must balance between convenient length for casting, and ease of handling the fish. Too long line makes it hard to grab fish in the landing net. 

I started fishing where the fast current enters deep pool. Very complex part of the river, due to conflicting currents. There's big eddie and reverse flow on the opposite side of the pool .

I fished both sides, and crossed the stream to reach head of the pool, where the rapid current joints it.  In a waist-deep water, I felt a tug on the end of the rig - fish on!  It was quite big grayling.  

The fish was hooked in dangerous for wading current, so I rushed to shallow water, while keeping tension on the line. I netted it , and Alek made for me this photo. My first big grayliong on tenkara rod! 

I was very happy, indeed. Such a nice fish, in heavy current. It took small olive nymph of my own recipe.

I continued to fish on another side of the pool, from middle of the river.  In the middle, there's shallow water with few boulders, like a small island.   Pretty soon, I hooked another big grayling. Also on small olive nymph. 

Isn't it beautiful? I do love that river.

I fished the whole run from both sides. It wasn't very productive though. I had another fish, also probably big one, but it snagged with second fly on underwater tree branch, and I lost it.  I broke off quite a lot of nymphs in this run, and also some flies remained on the trees.

We met together again near the van to go for lunch. I asked guys how many graylings they caught during the morning session.  Some caught as many as 12 or 14.  I have only 2 and one lost. I felt like I suck at fishing skills.  But I explained it that i'm using tenkara, and i'm still learning it, so my effectiveness is not top notch. 

After lunch I explored upper Sana river and it's confluence with Ribnik. There's very long and deep hole on the Ribnik side. Looks fishy, but it didn't produce any bites.

In the evening, the guys cooked local mushrooms, which they picked during the morning nearby our camp. It's called Craterellus cornucopioides, or black chanterelle, or "horn of the dead". It looks a bit scary in the nature. 

But tastes good with pasta.