Australian Fly Fishing Championship Team hampered by rain
4 June.Peter Dixon, as Captain, aided by manager Royce Baxter, is leading Joe Riley, Jonathan Stagg, Tom Watson, Emilio Caggianoe, Craig Coltman and Max Verashaka on their bid for World Championship success. They are a tremendously experienced team. Their preparation has been over a long period of time, even former championships. Team Australia is ranked 7th in the World, which, in the rather biased scheme of these things, is testament to their long term dedication to the team venture. In the contest, which so frequently involves grayling, and river, locations, to be so competitive at this level is remarkable in itself, reflecting, of course, Australia's constant excellence in sport. The San has been overwhelming and completely unfishable, but is now dropping. The fishing preparation was restricted to lakes, and off-water activities, and there are precious few opportunities for truly representative fishing. Most of the other teams will be arriving this coming weekend. The weather forecast is finally a little more positive and water is being released from the Miczkowce/Solina Hydro system at a massive 300 cubic metres per second in order to allow sufficient capacity in the lakes to hold up any more rainfall, and allow the tail water in the river to be fishable in time for the championship program.
There are now three river sections on the San River itself, and not including a Solinka section as previously planned, and two lake sections on Miczkowce. The San sections are all tail water, and so can be controlled in terms of flow rate to a certain extent by the release from the dams.
8th June.
Students of history will be aware that the Normandy landing was delayed until the weather over Europe improved. On the 6th of June the weather was considered adequate for the "Normandy Landing". The severe weather pattern which has robbed "Team Australia" from completing a well worked out preliminary plan to fish the San and lake with our guide and San expert Jeremy Lucas. Elsewhere in Poland rivers are running in flood conditions and villages have been isolated !
7th of June 2010 saw a reversal of conditions and while fishing was not possible a 10 Km hike up and down a local mountain was the activity of the day. Leg weary we retired to be awoken with sun and a river repairing itself. Fishing was possible but the quarry turned out to be mostly coarse fish.
Today the 8th of June the rivers are returning to spring flows and visibility improving every hour. The team had a 3 hour competition on the Solinka which previously had been competition water but due to flooding has been withdrawn from being a sector and is now available for practice! many fish were caught particularly with nymphing techniques. Most fish were again coarse. In the afternoon Jeremy demonstrated power wading and fishing to identify pockets of fish and once identified the recommended approach is to position oneself in the prime position considering wind and flows to optimise the catching opportunities. After the demonstration an hour and a half session by all resulted in the capturing of many fish with Jonothan Stagg landing over 20 in the time!
The team is working well and I am positive that with a modicum of good
fortune my reports will continue to be encouraging and point to Team
Australia success.
Peter Dixon - Team Captain.