FF Retrospective of 2017

Revising previous posts on my blog, I noticed that during the last two years I wrote very little. It’s not only the writing but also the fishing that suffered under lack of time during the last year. I spent maybe 16 days on the water, of which about 4 were casting sessions. Comparing this situation with years in which I had 70-80 fishing days or more, it is definitely not much but it could have been worse.

I spent the beginning of 2017 doing plans and tying flies almost like every year. I’ve been only once on the water during spring. Mid June caught me in Transylvania, where I fished for a few days the “Somesul Cald” river with Liviu and Smaranda from “Fly Fishing Romania”, then spent a week on Kola Peninsula with my Swedish and Norwegian friends where I fished “Kharlovka” and “Eastern Litza” rivers for big brown trout.  

Unfortunately, we found the Russian rivers full of melting water. The level was almost two meters above normal. All the fly fishing scenes visualized during the long winter days with the eye of the mind, fantastic hatches of ephemerids and caddies with huge fish feeding on the surface just hang out unfulfilled dreams. It was a fishing with heavy nymphs and streamers, hard and tiring as well as the siege of a fortress. We managed to catch fish, but not as we wanted, and yet I managed to overcome my personal brown trout record with a beautiful 2.1 kg fish.

A capricious summer with a lot of rain and swollen rivers followed in Central Europe, then end of September spent some time with my family on the Canary Islands where I fished together with Marek and Jose from “Fly Fishing Gran Canaria”. I set a new personal carp record with a 13 kg fish on a 7wt fly rod, a real burner.

Related to the fishing in Russia and Gran Canaria I’ll post more pictures  and details in the near future. Although fishing days were few, I managed to improve my casting with the two handed rod, shot down two personal records, fished in two new locations and spent a great time with new and old friends.

Plans for 2018:

- to catch a baltic salmon

- to fish more for cyprinides with the artificial fly

- to practice more with the two-handed rod
- to give me more time for editorial work

PS: You'll find great pictures and an amazing storie about Kola 2017 on Andre Hesselroth's blog - "Flyslingers"