Hello everyone! Less than a week ago, the 30th European Fly and Line Fishing Championship took place, this time it was held in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the Buna and Sturb rivers, as well as on Mostar Lake, which is practically an hour from the Neretva River. Before I talk about the competition itself, I would like to introduce the team that represented Bulgaria this year.
It was composed of Georgi Stoyanov, Marius Mitov, Alexander Metodiev, Andrey Artarski and me – Dimitar Petrov. The selection was made absolutely canonically – after the past Republican Championship and the general ranking, these were the people who won a place in the top five.
After we determined the composition of the national team, it was time to choose which championship to participate in, and we decided on the European Championship, due to the difficult logistics for the World Championship, which will be held in the USA. A little about the preparation. What we knew was relatively little – 2 rivers, 2 foreign species of fish for us (grayfish and softmouth trout), as well as fishing conditions that we can hardly compare with those in Bulgaria. Andy and I managed to do 4 fishing days of preparation a month ago, and unfortunately the conditions had changed a lot, especially on the Buna River, whose level had dropped by over 80cm (for a clearer idea, the river is about 30 to 50m wide). During these days of fishing, we were able to understand something quite important about the river, namely that the local fish population is, to put it mildly, low and will rely mainly on stocked fish during the competition, while the exact opposite was true for the Sturba River - a good population of wild fish - grayling and bream, and the local club is proud of the lack of stocking.
Day 1
For me, the draw assigned me to start on the Sturba River in the upper section – a small karst, quite cold and extremely overgrown in the place where I fished. Fortunately, the box was slightly familiar to me from practice last month, but almost nothing I fished with then worked and I had to find new successful flies. For the most part, the box did not allow me to lift my rod up, which made getting the fish into the cap difficult and even cost me 4 good fish. That day I managed to finish with 27 fish caught, most of which were grayling ranging in size from 21 to 49cm, which put me in second place in the sector and 7th place in the provisional ranking. The start was good.
Day 2
Mostar Lake. We knew it wouldn't be easy, the fish that were available according to the information were trout, carp, mullet and a new species for me - roach. We fished in rotations of 45 minutes. With 15 minutes. Rest and change of box. Before we started, a terribly strong wind blew, which made casting almost impossible, and the temperature was 37 degrees. In the first rotation, there was a trout strike, which ended with an unconditional break, but at least it gave me a direction to insist on. So in the second rotation, I hooked and pulled out a roach measuring 43 cm, which was enough for me to beat five competitors with smaller fish than me and finished in 5th place that day. In the provisional ranking, I was eighth, and at that moment that was enough for me, considering the fact that quite a few good competitors failed to catch anything that day.
Day 3
It was time to fish on the Buna River in the lower section – a huge spilled river that holds softmouth trout, Balkan trout and American trout in small quantities. My judge was the republican champion of Bosnia for youth – Faris Meškić. I started the round, and in the fifth minute a large American trout rose in front of me, which after 2 runs took my dry fly, followed by a 3-minute retrieve, after which it was retrieved – a 48cm American trout, incredibly combative and intact, with no traces of previous catches. There were sporadic retrieves, as here the fishing was entirely on dry flies, all the fish that I saw moving in were caught and recorded. In the last 20 minutes, I saw a small hole at the end of the box and purely intuitively started casting with a nymph, managing to catch 7 fast fish and totaling 15 fish for the round, which brought me a sector victory that day, and in the provisional standings I came in second place with an equal number of penalty points with Aleksandar Djukic.
Day 4
That day I was supposed to fish on Dolna Sturba. I was happy with the previous day's ranking, but I knew I had no right to a bad session. I came across a spot where not many fish were caught, which usually means 2 things – either there are no fish, or the competitor has not managed to catch them before. The spot was no more than 70 meters long, with a hole at the bottom and a rapid about 40 cm deep, it didn't look particularly promising. I saw 2 fish in the hole, but it was over two meters deep with steep banks, I knew it wouldn't be easy. I managed to catch 2 large grayling, over 45 cm, both of which came out of the deepest part of the pond. I was impressed that the fish were standing singly, which required very careful fishing, literally inch by inch, and I think that was the winning strategy. In this round I managed to catch 23 fish, which was the best result for the box itself, as well as for the sector. I won the sector victory for the second day in a row and by a margin, there was nothing more I could ask for. At the end of the day the provisional ranking was also released, and for the second day in a row I shared the gold metal with an equal number of points with Aco Djukic.
Day 5
My last sector was Gorna Buna, perhaps the most uneven of all the sectors. There were boxes with over 70 fish per run, as well as those with 0 fish caught since day 1. I fell into exactly such a box. Although I tried to stay calm, I knew that with a result of 0-2-4-0 fish I did not have a particularly good chance of ranking well in my group. The box was impossible to wade in, over 2 meters deep and terribly overgrown, I only had 2 places that allowed me to cast and not very much. In the end, I managed to catch a single fish, and it was on a long nymph with a line at a distance of about 20m. The truth was that this fish was more than enough for this box, as it managed to send me to 17th place in my group, as there were 3 people who had not managed to catch anything. I knew that I was leaving the top three. In the evening, the general standings were released, in which I took 4th place in the individual standings, and our team came in 13th in this championship.
Even though I missed out on a medal, I am happy with my performance because I certainly gave it my all, it was undoubtedly my best game at the European Championship. Thanks to all the team members for the great team play! See you soon!