Blog — Fishing competition

When asked to write a blog on one of my venues from the World Fly Fishing Championships, my first reaction was to talk about one of the sessions I placed well in. But competitive fly fishing is a journey of learning, so, I picked my 4^th session, which was on an amazing stretch of the Vltava River at the Vyssi Brod Section. It was three hours of roller coaster emotions, and somewhere in there I came very close to breaking a couple of rods over my knee.

*2025 Team Canada

The session started with light rain and overcast conditions. It was hard to see much, except what looked like the obvious good water to cover. Walking the beat, I quickly saw it had every type of water we had trained for, from streamer to whitefish (chub, dace, roach and barbel) water. My first reaction was, this is a good beat, followed by damn, I’ve got a lot of rods to set up. My biggest worry was that there were too many options. Even though the beat looked good, there was the potential to waste time, which you can’t get away with at Worlds.

*One of my Czech controllers, all my controllers were fantastic.

Once I came up with a plan, I decided to set up five rods.

1) Arcay Otter11ft 2/3 dry/dropper

2) Arcay Otter 11ft 2/3 single nymph (or double but started with a single)

3) Arcay Otter 11 ft ¾ double nymph

4) Arcay Otter ¾ dry fly rod with a single dry

5) Arcay Otter 10 ft 6/7 for streamer fishing

I would have liked to set up more but there was a lot of brush and distance in the beat so more would have been too difficult to manage.

The research we had done had prepared me to expect good numbers of brown and rainbow trout, and few whitefish. Along the far bank of the middle section of my beat looked incredible for chub water. All fish species counted, so long as they were of size.

*Chub from the Vltava River

I had high hopes that the top section of the beat would produce on the streamer. Throughout every session, my first plan of attack was to get fish on streamers, for the simple reason that if the fish are on streamers, they are much faster to get to the net. After 10 minutes (which was 5 minutes too long, just willing it to happen), nothing. I changed rods in the middle of the river and started nymphing, nothing. SHIT, I had really counted on scoring a few fish by now.

I got to what I thought of as the start of the whitefish water. At this point, with no fish yet, I was getting concerned. I switched to a dry fly rod and instantly had a rise. A small chub, too small to count, then three more.  All too small, all chub. I changed to a Rockerka and started to work some longer casts along the bank, which looked like perfect chub water. First drift I hit a chub that was quite large. Finally, at about an hour and a half in, having at this point only caught a bunch of small fish, this was my first fish that counted.  I thought I might be on to something, but nothing else I caught was big enough to count.

At this point I am tripping out. One of the worst feelings in this game is the feeling of letting your teammates down. It’s terrible. It can make you second guess every decision you make, turning your head to mush.  It’s hard to fish anything well and efficiently when you lose your mental focus. I knew I had to change what was happening quickly.

I narrowed my focus to two rods, my dry fly rod and my 11ft ¾ weight Otter. As I got back into position the rain stopped and everything lightened just a little. I noticed some deeper depressions in what I thought were weird areas. As I moved down, I found what I was looking for. There was a trough in the faster water that I could not see before.

I switched flies to match the water and on the first drift I lost a brown at the net. With many choice words screaming in my head, I put another drift through. Right away another brown. With a sigh of relief, I scored the fish and went right back. Another brown right away. While I was super happy to find what was working, it was a bit of a wade to get back to my controller and it had taken me too long to figure out. Although I managed to score more fish, I simply ran out of time.

*Small brown from the Vltava

By the end of the session, I could have very easily ended up in the bottom of the pack and was relieved to land in the middle. There is no doubt that drawing this beat gave me an opportunity to place high in this session, and I did not capitalize fully. This was a session that will haunt me for awhile, but at the end of the day it’s all about learning. A year ago, I do not think I could have regained my focus and fished the last part of the session well.

*Team Canada Captain, Ian Troup, with our Czech guide Vojta

It was an honor to represent my country in a sport that I love with teammates that have offered me unlimited support and opportunity for development.  I would like to give a big thank you to Smart Angling for all they do to support Canadian growth in competitive fly fishing.

Morgan McLean – Rising Waters

Ivo talks about the importance of casting not just a straight line, but also a straight leader when fishing lakes.

Enjoy and don't hesitate to share your feedback and reactions. We would love a discussion on the tips we are sharing.

The Czech team is probably the most successful in the all-time history of the World Championships. In 2018 they were on the podium again, this time with the team silver in Trentino. Smart Angling interviewed the team’s Manager (Assistant Captain) and flyfishing superhero Igor Slavik about the ingredients of this success. 

SMART ANGLING (Ivo): Igor, tell us a bit about yourself first. When and how did you start fly fishing? How did you get involved in competitive fly fishing?

IGOR: I started flyfishing very late: I was 27. Until then I was spin fishing, but I was full of respect for flyfishing. Once I picked a fly rod, I almost immediately started competing. And if I do anything I do it very intensively. For 6 years in a row I fished for more than 150 days per year;) After a few years I made the selection to the national team. I took part in a few European championships with my personal best a 7th place in Norway in 2007. With the team I was part of a silver performance in Ireland in 2009. As a manager of the national team in Slovenia we claimed the gold;) 

IVO: The Czech team is probably the most successful one in the all-time history of the World Championships. What are the key factors behind this?

IGOR: Many people have asked me same question. I thought about a lot and here is my opinion:

We do not have many huge natural fish in our waters. So instead of chasing the big ones, our thrill is to catch big numbers at competitions.  

Another factor is that we have very affordable fishing licenses (by European standards) - for less than 300 Euro you can fish almost everywhere in the Czech Republic throughout the year.

Our country is small - for comps I travel max. 300 km. But if I am lazy, I can stay in my region and do at least 10 competitions per year staying within 70 km from my home.

Overall, we have many comps. If you are crazy for comps, you can do more than 25 per year in the Czech Republic. But normally, I would do about 14.

We also care about our youth. We have clubs for young fishermen. And coaches that spend time with them.

IVO: How is the Czech national team selected?

IGOR: We have annual ranking. You can compete in as many comps as you want. But only one’s 7 best results of the year are taken into account in the ranking. Every comp has different point value. For example, World Championship 60 points, European Championship 50 points, National lake 40 points, National river 40 points, 1st league round 30 points…

The second part of the selection for the national team are 5 rounds between the 14 best competitors from the previous year’s ranking.

And the combination of results of the present year’s ranking from all comps and these 5 rounds are used to calculate the final ranking for the team selection. The team Captain has the right to make some corrections, but the general practice is that the top 5 form the Worlds team and the second 5 go to the European Championships.

Does it make sense? :D 

IVO: How did the team prepare for the 2018 World Championships? Did you visit the venues a year or more in advance or was your practice just limited to the weeks and days right before the competition?

IGOR: Tony (Pešek) our fishing Captain visited Italy in August: one month before the competition.

We collected info about Italy for a whole year. Plus a few years ago our team competed in and won the European Championships on the same waters.

As far as practice right before a competition is concerned, our habit is to arrive just one week in advance.

Photo: Igor Slavik

IVO: What does a day of team practice look like, on rivers and on lakes?

IGOR: Nothing complicated. Every member of the team fishes in his own style. And then we have a chat during the evening tying session. On the next day we try other techniques and so on. 

Photo: Igor Slavik

IVO: Your team always seems to have a “reserve” angler. How do you decide who of the team members will start and who will be the reserve? How and when do you make a decision to use the reserve?    

IGOR: You are wrong. We always have a reserve, but we never use him except in case of injury. This year I was the reserve;)

Our opinion is that motivation can suffer if you have to worry about being swapped with the reserve angler. 

IVO: As most tournaments of this level, this year’s World Championships seemed to get more difficult with every session. Yet, while many teams were struggling the Czech team stayed strong and even got better towards the end. How did the team manage to adapt so well as the sessions got tougher? 

IGOR: Competitions with a high number of sessions, like the Worlds, keep getting more and more difficult. I think it is about having a good level of self-confidence. Same like the Canadian ice hockey national team: everybody in the world knows that they will win at the final. And they know it, too. ;)

Anyway, we have a proverb: the hares are counted at the end of the hunt. What this means is that a competition ends only after the last second of the last session.

If you are on top after the 4th session, it means nothing.

There is no recipe how to adapt to such a stress. Only to fish as many competitions as you can. I mean MANY comps. Our boys in their competitors’ life have participated in hundreds.

And the last, but not least important, is having a good vibe in the team. This year we had a very easy going crew.  

One more point: I think that it is very difficult for organisers to set balanced/even beats at competitions with such a big number of teams. And this is also why it is so hard to catch fish in the last sessions.

Photo: Igor Slavik

IVO: I am sure everyone will agree that strategy, skill and experience are a key in competitive fishing. But how important is good equipment, in your opinion? What equipment did the Czech team use at this year’s World Championships?

IGOR: If you do not have to think about your equipment, then it is good enough. If you are limited by your equipment that is a handicap.

It is very important to have good equipment.

We are happy, that we have great sponsor - Hanák Competition. Hanák helps us with rods, reels, hooks, beads, leader material. This year and many years before.

If I am to highlight just one piece of equipment: this year it was Hanák’s new rod SUPERB XP.  

Photo: Igor Slavik

IVO: What are the roles of the team captain and the team manager (assistant captain)?

IGOR: The Captain’s role is to collect information and analyse it. To choose the team strategy. But you know, our boys are very experienced, they can change the strategy in a second. And this is also one of our strong sides.

My job as a Manager is to calm down the boys and motivate them, not to create unnecessary pressure on them. And to make fun around. When you are happy and with a smile, everything is possible.

IVO: What do you think is the strongest side of the Czech team? And the weakest?

IGOR: Strongest - many comps under our belts. Our guys can say: you know, this is same situation like we had in Finland… or somewhere else…

Weakest – language, but this is also getting better; in competitive fishing we are ok. ;)

IVO: What surprised you the most at the 2018 World Championships?

IGOR: Ishimura Misako - the only person who voted against all teams, when we wanted two rotations to make the lake sessions more equal. 

And Matjaz Tirovič who saved the life of a controller who had a heart attack. Thumbs up!!!

And my young teammates (Vojta, Lukáš, Franta) - they were so focused, calm and easy.

And the older ones (Tony, David) - so much experience.

IVO: If there is one thing you could change about the way the team prepared and competed, what would it be?

IGOR: Happy end - so everything was great. You know we were very close to wining the gold medal. Just one fish!

But two fish less and we would have dropped to the 4^th place.

I mean, it is very close between being a hero and being a zero.

Do not take it too seriously!

In addition to being a successful angler Igor Slavik is an avid fly fishing photographer. Follow him on Instagram at @igi_flyfish