Stan Freyheit tells us why his ceramic nymphs as making a difference to the well-educated fish of Bosnia
The Pliva and Ribnik rivers in Bosnia are becoming some of the most famous destinations to fish in Europe. Crystal clear waters packed with insects allow trout and grayling to reach impressive sizes. In other words, you could say the Pliva and Ribnik are the land of the giants, where 50 cm graylings and 4 kg trouts are often caught.
But these hefty fish are becoming harder to catch due to extreme fishing pressure. When you fish the Ribnik , you can meet people from all over the world. A Swedish guy dry fly fishing, an angler from the UK nymphing with indicator, an American looking for big trout on the streamer or maybe people from New Zealand looking for big grayling.
I am a pro fly tyer, and my job is to produce a unique kind of nymph called the ceramic fly. Funnily enough, ceramic flies were designed in France to fish the same kind of waters that you will find on the Pliva and Ribnik, deep, crystal clear, and populated with educated fish.
I spend too much time on the vise to keep travelling all around the world to fish, that’s why I built a team of pro anglers to test the ceramic flies all around the world.
Now I will introduce you to the most brilliant member of the ceramic flies pro team. His name is Cédric Nolin and he’s a sight nymphing maniac. Cédric only practices sight nymphing, he’s not interested in other nymphing methods, because he knows that sight nymphing is the only way to always select the bigger fish.
If you want to go fishing on the Pliva and Ribnik rivers, you have to know several important facts :
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Brown trout and grayling are extremely well-educated
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The water is crystal clear
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The bigger fish are not often rising
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Fish tend to not move to grab a nymph, because there’s a lot of food in these rivers.
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Fish will refuse classic nymphs used by the majority of the anglers.
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Sight nymphing is the best way to catch big fish, because indicator nymphing will lead to poor drift , and educated fish will refuse your nymphs.
So what do you need to do if you want to catch fish on the Ribnik ?
You have to fish with different, realistic and fast sinking nymphs to reach the big fish feedng on the bottom.
You also have to be extremely precise with your drifts in order to have the nymph presented very close from the mouth of your target. Last advise that Cédric gave me: you need a range of different sizes and weights of ceramic nymphs in order to fish the differing depths.
Cédric told me that every new day he’s fishing on the Ribnik, he tries a different size of nymph, from hook size 18 to size 14. Then he analyses the reaction of the fish, and he selects the best size of nymph. Ceramic flies are different from classic nymphs, because they will sink faster than flies tied with natural material, and they will allow you to reach the hefty grayling and the monster trout feeding on the bottom of the Ribnik.
Given the size of the fish that Cédric caught on the Ribnik with the ceramic flies, I think that you can believe me that ceramic flies are making the difference on the Ribnik!
And I want to offer you an extra present if you are a faithfull reader of ESF : untill march 2017, if you order ceramic flies and tell me in a message with your order that you read ESF, I will offer you one extra ceramic fly on your order.
For more info on where to order your ceramic nymphs please visit Stan's website and don't forget to mention ESF for an extra fly.