Tuesday, October 30, 2012

October Frosts

Family obligations have kept me off the water for most of September and October (i.e. the best part of the Grayling season). I have therefore put great expectations to this past weekend, when I have finally managed to squeeze in a little time by the river with some fishing pals.

The trip was planned to the greatest detail, so that nothing could possibly go wrong. As is often the case with fishing trips planned too meticulously something did go wrong - in this case we were let down by the weather. A freak October snowstorm hit the Czech Republic, which made the fishing somewhat difficult.


When the snow stopped to fall we had a period of crisp frosty sunshine, very unlike the usual October mists. There was no chance of surface fish activity, but at least we were not fishing in a snowstorm.


The nymph proved to be an effective method, and both me and my friends managed to catch and release over a score grayling - not bad given the circumstances.


We even managed to catch a few out of season brownies, which was rather unexpected. The stretch of river we had chosen is way downstream from the prime brown trout riffles, and is locally known as pure grayling water.


The flies that proved the most effective were largish Czech Nymphs with contrasting hotspot and beaded nymphs tied after the Slovak pattern Uhorčík.

The color pink, normally a certain grayling favorite, was surprisingly ineffective. We had much better success with flies with tags and hotspots tied in darker claret or fluo green.