You can contact him for more info at “John Davey” bilyslon@mbox.vol.cz
Not a lot of Brits get out to this little country and many tend to have a very hazy idea of even where it is. So first, a quick geography and history lesson. Let’s get this bit straight first. The Czech Republic is nowhere near any of the worlds known trouble spots. It is also not very far away. It’s closer than Barcelona or Rome. If you go to Edinburgh and back again, you’ve travelled further than if you go to Prague, the fairy-tale capital city of this beautiful country. The CR stopped being an Iron Curtain country when the Wall came down and today it is full of happy capitalists. Got the picture?Sandwiched neatly between Germany to the north and Austria to the south is Czech’s Bohemia, the land of Skodas… and carp. Carp lakes are everywhere but if you are a carp angler and planning a visit to the area then you might have to adjust your thinking a little. You see, the sea fishing there is crap. Probably because at best, a 300 mile cast is needed to hit the water. It’s a landlocked country and seafood is therefor a fairly rare food item. Fish, for the table, is traditionally something that comes from lakes and rivers, the exact opposite to the British situation. Are you beginning to get the picture? Do I have to spell it out? Doh. Alright then. They eat carp in the Czech Republic! And catfish. And pike. Yeah, even bream. Skoda. (I’m told that ‘skoda’ means ‘what a pity’ in Czech – quite apt until you look at the new ones!).Okay, so you are shocked. Now get over it. For an angler in the CR, it is as normal for an angler to take home a carp as it is for a sea angler in the UK to take home a cod. And there are plenty of fish to spare.Angling here is a major pastime. There are estimated to be as many anglers in the CR as we have in the UK, yet we have 55 million people and they have only 17 million. A whole range of sensible rules (probably a few daft ones too) govern the sport, with close seasons relevant to specific species making our system seem prehistoric. The anglers here are well equipped, this is the year 2000. A trip to the river showed me that the average CR coarse angler has comparable tackle to the UK angler and, except for imported items, they pay rather less for their tackle. I visited Vaclav’s Magic Fish tackle shop in Ceske Budejovice and picked up a folding trout landing net for a fiver. It’s good quality and would set you back five times that price in the UK. One carp angler I spoke to told me that his top quality bedchair cost him £35 in his local shop. Could be worth me taking a truck next time! One thing did surprise me, many of our home grown angling stars are as big in the CR as they are at home. Flipping through the angling magazines I saw articles from Rod Hutchinson, Andy Little, Kevin Maddocks and the like. Matt Hayes was nowhere to be seen, though a guy who looks just like him – and has a similar name 😉 did feature on one cover! Another publication I picked up was an angling calendar, I couldn’t read a word of it but the pictures it displayed told the story as to what’s available in the CR.Maggi and I needed a break and we decided to choose the CR just because it was somewhere different and inexpensive to get to. We arranged our trip through Déjà-vu Tours run by an ex-pat Englishman, the all round wit and raconteur John Davey. John lives there, speaks the lingo and made our trip a lot easier than it would otherwise have been. It must be said, the language is a problem. Despite Maggi’s French and my German (neither good but both just about adequate) without John as a fluent guide we probably would have been stuffed on many occasions. Our original idea was to rent a car but we revised this when we realised that we had no way of reading any road signs and would probably end up getting clamped for illegal parking etc, so we ended up doing the tourist bit in Johns minibus for the whole trip. This turned out to be a good idea as he was a perfect guide and has a great knowledge of the country and it’s customs. The language needn’t have been such a problem had I read my mobile phone’s details a little better. A translation service can be had by dialling 333 if you are connected to the Paegas GSM network – as a BT Cellnet customer this is the service you get connected to when switching on your UK mobile on arrival in Prague. The majority of carp in the CR are farmed for food. They are bred, fattened and brought on, in purpose-dug lakes that are periodically drained when the fish are removed for their food value. These lakes were seemingly everywhere and easily recognisable as such by the feed-silos on the bankside for feeding them up. It is possible to fish some of these lakes and a visit to the local tackle shop can produce results. I managed a couple of hours fishing on one such lake and, although I caught nought, I did see a 23lb common landed. I do mean a couple of hours too, this trip was very much a holiday and fact finding trip. I only got to fish two afternoons on the river apart from the time spent on the carp lake. These trips were spent in the company of a local Czech angler, Jirka. He knew a little German and managed to explain that at this time of year only small carp can be expected in the river but in August the average size is up to 15 to 25lbs with catfish averaging 45 to 60lbs. That was on the local stretch. Up-river at Lake Orlik, catfish to over 200lb have been taken. One of Jirka’s friends who was introduced to me as the local angling ‘star’ took 4 carp of over 50lb last summer from the river plus many 30’s and several 40’s. I managed a three pounder!On our way back to Prague we stopped off for a look at Lake Orlik. This water is formed by a dam on the Vltava river and is quite a big puddle, believe me. If I get a chance, I’ll be back here later in the summer with a couple of cat-rods. Catfish of 5 meters in length have been seen here, estimated at a possible 500lb. And no, I’m not telling porkies. Kevin Maddocks in his book “Catfish” also refers to the fact that fish of this size exist here.The game angler too is well provided for in the tributaries of the main rivers. Only a couple of years ago the world championships were held here. Trout abound in the crystal streams running down from the mountains, both browns and rainbows – and the countryside accommodation here is stunning. We stayed in a castle, honest! Every village has at least one and lots of these have been converted into hotels where you can expect excellent food and drink and, if you are unlucky enough to get a set in your room, appalling TV. For the more entrepreneurial of you, it is possible to buy a ‘fishing camp’ on the banks of the rivers and lakes. You can pick one up for a song. These are former ‘holiday’ camps left over from the old communist days. I’ll never knock Billy Butlin again, most of the chalets are smaller than my garden shed!John is not an angler. He says he ‘prefers watching paint dry’. Sad innit? Skoda. Still, he has a wealth of knowledge about the country and is quite well connected. He wanted me to assure any anglers planning on visiting the CR that he can probably accommodate any anglers wishing to visit the country though he added that he would prefer to look after their wives whilst the men fished. Skoda!
You can contact him for more info at “John Davey” bilyslon@mbox.vol.cz