Jakub Mraz tells us a little about the fishing he is doing in Slovakia.
Fly fishing is getting more and more popular in Slovakia in the last few years. It is not as unusual in the past to see a fly fisher who is standing in the water and making that funny looking loops with fly line in the air. Finally, fishing in Slovakia is not just about lake fishing for carps with two rods and corn or worm hooked in the end of leader. In this article I will write a few words about my favourite lake in the heart of Slovakia. Let me introduce you to the reservoir Bešeňová. In the next part of article I will use the term-lake“ Bešeňová.
This lake area is covered by beautiful mountains, to the northeast there are High Tatras and on the south Low Tatras. The other main dominant in this area is hill Choč. Both, High and Low Tatras are national parks where there are plenty of ways you can spend your free time – hiking and climbing in summer and skiing in winter. Or you can just fish in rivers and lakes of the area. In this region there is plenty of room. You can choose from hotels or other forms of accommodation.
The reservoir of Bešeňová is a part of the water management system Liptovská Mara. The primary function of the reservoir is to compensate the peak flow rates of the hydroelectric power plant Liptovská Mara and to use the hydroelectric power potential of the river Váh.
This are reasons why water levels of the lake change during the day. It is really hard to fish there in times when the operator starts to fill it with water but on the other hand, they need to pump water back to Liptovská Mara reservoir. At this time, fish are not active and they need some time to get used to the change of water height and temperature.
Reservoir Bešeňová is 190 hectres and we could say, this is the smaller sister of the main water dam in this region – Liptovská Mara. The lake offers catch and release fishing, it is actually the only one in the whole country. This is the main reason why I like this place so much, because the fish have opportunity to grow really large. You are allowed to use spinning or fly fishing method of fishing.
The lake holds mostly rainbows= and brown trout. In the summer, when it’s too hot to fish for trout during sunny days it’s nice to fish for large carp in shallow waters. It is an exciting way of sight fishing and we wait until the evening, when trout will again start to feed in the bays. There are also some pike, perch and few grayling too but the main fish is rainbow trout. Fish are common in lengths 40 – 55 cm but it is nothing special to catch trouts over 60 cm. And that really big ones are over 70 cm but it’s a challenge to get them.
The man who is responsible for fishing licenses and who is also working the security on this water is really nice. He is very responsible and cheerful guy and you can see he is the right person for this lake. He is living for his job and it would be much better if fishing organisations had more people like him.
I usually fish with fly rod aftma 6 with floating fly line. I recommend to use a fly reel with a reliable drag system and enough backing. Waders are more or less necessary, since the changes of water level cause a lot of mud on the banks. I prefer fly fishing with buzzers and nymphs. You are allowed to use three flies and everyone has their own secrets for their favorite fly. It is also possible to fish with streamers and intermediate line with a good chance to get some giant trout. When I am fishing with buzzers I almost everytime use leader 0,18 mm and for streamer fishing I prefer 0,22 – 0,24 mm. With wet flies I don’t have such big experience here, I get just a few trout on wet fly. My favourite flies are different patterns of epoxy buzzers, pheasant tail nymph, hare ears nymph, diawl bach or my own patterns which are often combination of pheasant tail feather and some natural dubbing (squirrel or rabbit).
It was 10 years ago when I first visited this lake. I had no experience with stillwater flyfishing but I got a few smaller trout. I used lures and I had no idea at the time, that there existed patterns like buzzers or even nymph, which could be used for lake fly fishing. After my first visits I get to know lot of friends and I get much better at fly fishing in general. In fact, as you know, it’s all just about experiences. Especially in lake fly fishing.
I have in mind my last visit in the end of September last year. I fished the whole weekend on the lake and I got few nice trout. On Saturday, I was wading with my friend in the bay and there was hour or two without any takes. The water surface was calm, no wind and we saw fish but just too far from us. And then it happened.We got takes from maybe 10 fish but we lost all of them. It was unbelievable, they destroyed our hooks or they just broke the leaders. Leaders, which usually don’t have a problem to hold trout. Then it just stopped for some time and we got fish just in the evening. We used buzzers and small nymphs and also dry flies and caught rainbows around 55 – 60 centimeters. We rather didn’t want to imagine how big the trout which we couldn’t land in the few hours before were!
On the next day, Sunday, it was windier and fish were not so active. I went the whole day just with one nice rainbow and then it just came 6 pm and the “golden hour”. Last hour in the year for me on this lake. I lost the first bigger fish after few minutes of fight. Second fish just destroyed the hook with Shipman’s Buzzer. Then it came the third one on Diawl Bach and I could land it. Right at 7 pm, which is the end of fishing in September on this lake I caught a beautiful rainbow in fantastic condition. A healthy fish and in the sunset fish had really nice colour. Great day, great evening and great end of trout season.
This is one face of flyfishing on this lake. The next and more common is the situation, when you are casting the whole day to the empty water, when you don’t see any fish and you will start to think that there actually are no fish at all. I think that this is reality on all lakes. Lake fly fishing is not for everyone, it’s totally different to river fishing and I think much harder. But then came the day as I described above and you will be in the fly fishing heaven.
Now, has just started the trout season in Slovakia. If you are looking for some new place for your fishing trip or you will just travel during summer holidays across my country, you are deeply welcome. And if you are fan of stillwater fly fishing, give it a try and visit reservoir Bešeňová. I cannot guarantee you that you will catch a fish, but I am sure you will enjoy fishing here.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on mraz.jakub89@gmail.com