2025 World Fly Fishing Championship Review: Session 5 in Vyssi Brod on the Vltava River
My last session brought me to the Vyssi Brod section of the Vltava River. I really liked this stretch of river when I fished the world championships in 2014, and I was looking forward to fishing it again. I knew from the previous sessions that the lowest third of the sector contained mostly bad beats. The best beats were the first 3 to 4 and then there were scattered good and less good beats throughout the rest of the venue. In general, higher was better though.
I ended up drawing beat 7. The beat production page on flycomps.com showed me that the beat had finished 3rd, 10th, 28th, and 13th in the sessions before me. In the 4th session, the famous Tomas Starychfojtu of the Czech team had scored 13 fish for a 13th place finish. I hoped to at least match his fish total and see where that would place me in the session.
I arrived at my beat and was initially encouraged. Overall, it was a lower gradient beat. If I separated it into thirds, the lowest third was up to waist deep and slow. The middle third was slightly shallower but had a medium paced run with nice depression that was lined by scattered boulders on both sides. The top of the beat was a shallower riffle which became a medium paced glide before spilling into the nicer run below.
Where the glide trailed into the run, there was a pontoon party barge anchored on the side of the river. I didn’t think much about it while scouting the beat, but this boat ended up playing a pivotal role later in my session.
During my scouting time there were scattered rises mostly in the lower 2/3 of the beat. The majority of the fish were chasing egg laying caddis that were bouncing on the surface. I knew I could imitate this behavior well with the dry and nymph rig on one of my nymph rods. The only issue was that the bouncing caddis technique often has a poor hookup rate since the dry fly can be missed during the bouncing action.
I set up five rods again with the same list of dry fly, dry dropper, double nymph, jig streamer, and swung streamer rigs. I expected to use the dry and nymph and double nymph rigs the most but had the other rods ready in case my catch rate wasn’t what I expected.
My basic plan was to fish through the whole beat in the first 90-120 minutes of the session. I wanted to identify the most productive areas and then have time to rest and repeat them in the last 1/3 of the session.
I started in the slower water near the bottom. I first used my dry fly rod to target a smaller fish that rose along the weed line about 20 feet off the near bank. The fish rose and I set the hook. It was a quick fight because the fish was 19 cm and didn’t score.
A few minutes later I repeated the same process. This time I set the hook and landed my first fish five minutes into the session. It was a nice fish to start with at 28 cm.
After this first fish, I started covering scattered rises in the lowest area in my beat. Nearly all these fish seemed to be chasing adult caddis so I switched to the bouncing caddis dry. I landed two more fish and missed several more on the near side of the river. I marked the misses in my head to return to later.
I waded across to the far side of the river and targeted some likely looking holes between rocks on the far bank. I hooked and landed a nice 35 cm brown trout that ate my dry fly after a few casts in this area.
Looking at the bottom of my beat. I caught fish where the weeds transitioned to the deeper water, in the deeper water itself, and along the boulders on the far bank.
After that fish I waded back to the same area. Another nice fish took the nymph below my dry fly. I set the hook and fought it for a while. I was near the border of my beat though and could not follow it when it ran down to the beat below me. Eventually it got off when it buried itself in some weeds.
I waded back to the same general area and tried another bankside spot. This time a nice brown trout took my dry fly. Unfortunately, it took as I was bouncing my dry fly, and I ended up foul hooking it on the nymph. I was bummed but this fish was an example of the expected low conversion rate of this method.
Over the next half hour, I worked this bottom area of the beat. I landed a couple more fish and had quite a few misses on the dry fly as well. On one of those fish I tripped on a rock that was hidden on the bottom and hit my left knee hard. My waders filled with some water but I popped back up and somehow still landed the fish. I thought I had sprained my knee for a few minutes but the pain wore off and all I ended up with was a nice bruise after the session.
I then moved into the middle portion of the beat. I fished up the near side with the dry and nymph. I then used the double nymph rod through the middle deeper portion of the run. To finish the pass, I swapped to the dry and nymph for the slower water near the bank. I caught quite a few more fish with both rods in this area to raise my score up to 10 fish. I also missed a couple of smaller but still scoreable fish along the boulders on the near side of the river.
The middle run in my beat. I caught fish in the middle and along the boulders on both sides. This is where I planned to return in the last hour of my session.
I’d had a pretty good start to the first half of my session. I planned to rest the middle portion of my beat while I fished the riffle near the top for the next 30 -40 minutes. Then I would hit the middle run quickly, rest it again while fishing the bottom, and return to either the middle or the top at the end of the session.
As I was reaching the top of the run, the first canoes, kayaks, and rafts started coming through my beat. At first, they were sporadic but then groups of 5-15 boats at a time started passing with short intervals between the next group. Remember that party barge? This is also when it entered the story of my session. When I looked upstream toward the bank, the barge was coming toward me. A burly young guy was pushing it toward my position with two young women and a bar’s worth of drinks on board.
I tried to ignore the barge but had to dance out of the way when it approached my position. Being focused on other things at that moment, and not being able to speak the same language, I thought that they were just planning on having a nice drunken float down the river. When they lodged on the rocks in the middle of my beat, I ended up putting my rod down and I helped pull the boat off the rocks so they would stop making a ruckus and could head on their way downstream. To my horror, after I helped push them off the rocks, they dropped an anchor in the middle of the run where I had just caught my last five fish. This was the best water in my beat and the location where I knew I could return for a chance to catch more fish.
At this point I realized they were setting up a mobile bar. Boats began to stop and surround the barge to order drinks. My plan was over. It was time to switch gears and move on.
A picture is worth a thousand words right?
However, as I moved up to the run above my luck didn’t improve. I hooked a 31 cm brown on the double nymph rig in the middle of the top riffle. During the fight my rod tip crunched when I wasn’t doing anything abnormally. Somehow, I landed the fish with 7x tippet and no rod tip and brought it back to my controller. I then ran down to the rod that I had rigged with jig streamers in the middle of my beat. I spent the next too many minutes swapping over my nymph rig to the jig streamer rod before getting back to fishing.
I began working through the riffle some more at the top of my beat. I found that most of the fish were hugging the edge on the far bank. This meant that I had to wade to the middle of the river to fish the far side and to leave space behind me for all the boats to come through. Unfortunately, as is often the case, many of the occupants out on their pleasure floats weren’t exactly great at steering their boats.
For the next 40 minutes I kept one eye upstream and one eye on my rig. I tried to signal to the boats to go behind me but many of them didn’t even try to adjust their path. I ended up getting hit by boats or paddles four separate times as fish were taking my dry fly or my nymph. I broke off two of these fish and missed the other two. I also got lassoed by a drink rope that was trailing behind one of the boats and was nearly pulled under before I untied myself. I admit that I nearly lost my cool a couple of times. Somehow, I landed 3 more fish in this area to bring my score to 13 fish.
The riffle at the top of my beat. Most of the fish were along the edge of the calm water on the far side. Unfortunately, I couldn't avoid the boats that were funneled toward me while fishing this stretch.
I ran back to the bottom of my beat to finish the session. The half of the river closest to me was no longer an option in this area. Not only was there a mobile party barge in the middle of my beat but there was another bar on the bank at the bottom of my beat. Boats were parking all over the bank between my beat and the beat below me.
I waded out beyond these boats to fish the far bank again. In the last 15 minutes I landed one more chub and one more brown to bring my score up to 15. A CDC dry fly had fooled the bulk of the fish in my session and a peacock-colored Blowtorch did the trick for most of the rest. I had quite a few nice brown trout in the 35 cm range, so I ended up beating a couple of other anglers with more fish to take 5th place in the session.
A selfie with my controller George at the end of the session. Thanks George!
I had pretty mixed feelings about my final session. I was hoping for a bit more with the way the fishing had started. I was angry about the boat situation but there was nothing that could be done about it. I think I had a pretty solid plan for the session, but I wasn’t able to execute it once the middle of my beat was occupied. In hindsight, the main thing I would have changed is I would have tried fishing the single dry fly rod a bit longer to begin the session. While I was getting a lot of takes with the bouncing dry, my conversion rate was better with the single dry fly on a long finesse leader.
After the session ended, I was on pins and needles for an hour or two as the scores trickled in and we tried to do some math. Overall, my teammates had done well given their beat assignments. Jack Arnot finished 18th at the Devil’s Stones, Michael Bradley finished off an awesome effort with a 3rd place on Lipno II Reservoir, Mike Komara finished 20th on the Otava, and Cody Burgdorff won his session on the Rozmberk section of the Vltava. When all was said and done, we had solidified our bronze medal position and held off the home Czech team who finished in 4th place. Congratulations to France and Poland on their gold and silver medals. Congratulations to Pierre Kuntz on becoming the individual world champion for three years running. Congratulations to Gregoire Juglaret on his third medal in a row. And last but not least, congratulations to my teammate Michael Bradley for earning an individual bronze medal.
Our bronze team medal from the championship.
An awesome group of anglers and friends. It's impossible for most folks to realize how difficult it is to medal at a world fly fishing championship. We were all proud to bring home our second bronze team medal in a row.
Michael Bradley with his individual bronze medal and trophy.
Before I finish, I want to thank a lot of folks. Thanks to the organizers, volunteers, and controllers for putting on a well-run championship. It was nice to be back in the Czech Repbublic again. Thanks to our team captain Glade Gunther for giving countless hours to help run the team while simultaneously organizing the world championships for the youth and women this summer and the adult world championships next summer. Thanks to our reserve angler Austin Shoemaker for all the help during the practice week and during the competition at this year’s championship. You were a true team player and a big part of our success. Thanks to Trouthunter and Stio for sponsoring tippet and jackets for the team. Thanks to Courtney Van der Linden for running our team social media during the championship. Thanks to Katie Mazzia for keeping us fed with snacks for our sessions. Thanks to Mike Komara’s parents Katie and Jane. Thanks to our practice week guide Antonin Pleskac and our lodging hosts Helena and Vlasta. Last but certainly not least, a heartfelt thanks to my wife Julia and our kids Levi and Hailey. They support me being gone more often than I wish I was. My wife has supported me through 15 of these championships and 19 years of competing for Fly Fishing Team USA. I can’t thank her enough.
My world fly fishing championships reviews are over for another year. If I qualify again after the points cycle ends at our national fly fishing championships in September, I’ll be back with another review next year following the 45th World Fly Fishing Championships in Idaho.
