2025 World Fly Fishing Championships Review: Session 2 on the Otava River
In session two our group had the long drive to the Otava River near Susice. I drew beat 28. Ken Crane had set up a beat production page on flycomps.com after session one. This page was very useful in the rest of the championship to know who had fished the beat previously, how many fish they had caught, and what place they had finished. Unfortunately, I saw that the Scottish angler Craig Brown had landed 9 fish in my beat for a 30th place the day before. This didn’t give me high expectations going into my session.
When I arrived at the beat, my controller Borek said it was a poor section of water. Looking at it during my setup time, there were two shallow slow riffles with some long shallow flat sections below them. The riffles were about mid-calf deep. The deepest water in the beat was below the bottom riffle. When I waded into it at the end of the session, it barely touched the middle of my knee. Honestly, I looked at the water and thought Craig did really well to get 9 fish out of the beat. This beat would hold a few wild trout and maybe some grayling, but it did not have any water where stocked fish would congregate. Without stocked fish, it was difficult to get a good finish on the Otava.
If anyone reading this wants to forage a stinging nettle salad, I can send you a GPS pin!
I set up the same five rods as my first session. However, looking at my water, I really only expected to fish my dry fly rod and my two nymph/dry dropper rods. There wasn’t any water that seemed appropriate for streamers. This would be a finesse affair.
After setting up my rods, I still had 45 minutes to prepare to fish the beat. I spent the time scouting the water as much as I could to see if there were nooks and crannies that might hold fish that I didn’t see at first glance. I saw two fish rise during my practice time. One of them was rising pretty consistently near a debris pile on the bank. My plan was to catch this fish first. Then I would run to the bottom of the beat and fish the lower riffle. I would then move to the upper riffle. After that I would see how much time was left and adapt.
With four minutes left until my session started, I crept into place to try and catch the fish I had seen rising. I waded a long way out around the fish and tried to be as stealthy as I could. The last time I saw the fish rise I was about 45 feet from it. It never rose again. I tried fishing to it for about five minutes and covered its lie with a number of good drifts. The fish had spooked. It was as simple as that. I thought my approach had been adequate. The only thing I could think of that might have gone wrong was that I noticed my boot studs grinding on the gravel pretty loudly while I waded out. Needless to say, I pulled those studs out of my boots for the rest of the tournament just in case.
The brown trout I spotted rising during my setup time was just upstream of the debris pile in the center of the photo. I was hoping I would have a cool story to tell of how I caught it. Alas...
My session had not started well but I hoped this fish would return after I rested it. I grabbed my two nymph/dry dropper rods and ran to the riffle and flat at the bottom of the beat. After my initial encounter, I knew I couldn’t barge in and start throwing flies around without spooking fish. I made a couple of passes with the dry fly rod and progressively worked my way further up and out into the shelf below the riffle. I tried a couple of different dry fly patterns and got consistently good drifts. No fish decided it was worth the effort to rise to my dry fly.
I switched to the dry dropper and made a single pass. The drift wasn’t slowing like I wanted so I swapped to a double nymph rig with a 2.3 mm bead Pheasant Tail on the point and a 2 mm bead Vitamina perdigon on the dropper tag. Finally, a few minutes later I hooked and landed a 29 cm grayling. I was on the board, but it was 25 minutes into my session. Simply put, I was in trouble.
I fished through the area for another 20 minutes. I changed flies and weights. I changed drift angles, made dead drifts, and animated other drifts. Unfortunately, the only other take I had came just as I was picking up to make another cast. A grayling took my dropper tag fly, and I had too much momentum from my back cast. Predictably, my 7x tippet broke. GRRRRR!
The bottom of my beat looking upstream. The trees on the left side are blocking the view of the small riffle where I caught my first fish.
It was time to change locations and give this area a rest. I grabbed my rods and headed upstream. Along the way I stopped back at the debris pile to see if the original fish was rising again. It wasn’t but I put 10 drifts past the spot to no avail.
I moved through the flat above on my way toward the riffle at the top of the beat. I put blind dry fly casts through the water as I slowly worked upstream. I reached the area where there was the slightest bit of texture to the surface. I was casting to the left side of the river (looking upstream) and I heard a fish rise behind me. I turned around and there was a single rock about the size of a soccer ball on the bottom. I figured the fish was hanging on one of the seams flowing around the rock since the water was shallow and sandy just below it. On about my 10th cast, a small brown trout rose for my size 20 CDC baetis dry. I set the hook and had a very nervous fight for what was only a 26 cm fish.
The mostly featureless flat in the middle of my beat. I caught a brown trout on a dry fly in the upper left corner of the picture.
After that I continued to work up the flat and into the shallow riffle above. I swapped between dries, dry dropper, and a double nymph rig with 2 mm bead flies. Near the top of the riffle there was a tiny rock with water that was only about a foot deep below it. On my first drift below the rock a brown trout took my dropper fly.
The shallow riffle at the top of my beat. I caught a fish on the far side below a small rock that made just a bit of disturbance on the surface.
At this point I had worked through the water to the top of my beat. I headed back down to the water near the bottom and began working dry dropper and nymph rigs through the area below the riffle again. Shortly after I arrived, I watched a grayling rise below a slight disturbance on the surface from some rocks just upstream. I spent a long-time swapping flies and rigs to try and get this fish to eat. I never found the right solution, so I worked my way back up through the flat and towards the riffle at the top.
I now had three fish on the board and about 30 minutes left in the session. I decided it was time to get as techy as possible. I switched my nymph rig to 8x tippet and began making another pass. With about 15 minutes left I caught a small brown trout that took my dropper fly. It was a tiny soft hackle that my teammate Austin had tied for me which had worked for him during our first Otava River practice day.
I did not enough time for another move to the top of the beat so I decided to stay and fish the bottom of the beat. With about two minutes left, there was a splashy rise under the trees near the bottom of my beat. I quickly moved into position and made several drifts to the area. I tried dead drifts and twitches with no response.
After three hours, I only had four fish on the board. I was pretty gutted to be honest. I knew the beat was poor but I also didn’t feel I had covered it very well. I talked to my controller afterward and the day before Craig had caught all but two of his fish in the top 1/3 of the beat. Craig also talked to me at dinner later in the week. He told me he saw 9 fish rise and he caught those 9 fish. I didn’t have 9 fish rise but I also didn’t focus very well on the area where he found the majority of his fish.
A selfie with my controller Borek. He is an aquatic ecologist at the local university. I wish we'd had some time to chat about fisheries biology but we didn't get onto the topic until I was about to head back to the bus after the session. Thanks for volunteering Borek!
Four fish earned me a 31st place in the session. I had essentially blanked. I knew my chances at an individual medal or solid finish were over. More importantly, I was worried I had killed the team’s chances as well. This beat ended up finishing 26th, 32nd, and 11th in the rest of the tournament. The river flooded in session 4 and was coming down in session 5 so it would have been interesting to see this beat under different conditions. It was a poor beat regardless, but I left some fish on the table here and it’s the kind of session I’ll be thinking about and training toward in the future.
Luckily the rest of my team had an amazing 2nd session. Mike Komara finished 3rd on the Devil’s Stones, Jack Arnot won his session in Rozmberk with an insane 62 fish, Michael Bradley finished 2nd in Vyssi Brod, and Cody Burgdorff finished 4th in his session on the lake. Team USA was still in first place after session two with a 15 point lead over Poland and France only one point behind them in 3rd place. I couldn’t help thinking how much my session had contributed to our point total, but it was time to get over it and refocus for session 3.
