We moved into our World Masters Fly Fishing Championships hotel today, Wellness Hotel Diana. The place is high up in the rolling hills outside of Zábřeh Czech Republic. It’s beautiful but there will be little time to enjoy its features. Instead of swimming in the pool or a few nice pilsners in the bar this afternoon, we prepared our gear for the competition. Tomorrow we’ll be up at 4:30 AM then on a bus with other contestants to the water and usually not back until about 7 PM. By then you are exhausted!
The way the tournament works is each team has four members. The competition consists of four three hour sessions. This year there are three sessions on the Morava River and one on a high country lake. Each team member is assigned a letter – A, B, C or D. I’m A and tomorrow I compete in two sessions against all other “A” folks from other teams. Meanwhile my three team members, Pete, Mike and Brett fish against their matching letters from other teams.
In order to score a fish he must be 20 cm long and each fish is measured by the judge. It’s best to catch lots of fish rather than a couple big ones. There are twelve teams so scores after each session range from 1-12. One being the best you can score and twelve the worst. The idea is to have the fewest points at the end. So, if you win your session amongst your group you score a 1. If you’re second you score a 2 and third scores a 3 and so on. If you’re the big looser you score a horrible 12!
The team with the least number of points in the end wins and the angler with the least number of points wins the individual. This is an Olympic style event so winners receive medals with grand champs receiving gold. It’s an incredibly challenging yet fun event. And I can tell you, I competed against many of these competitors back in the day and some are the best anglers in the world.
I’ll be honest, we have our hands full in this one. Despite all our experience and practice, its extremely difficult to beat the Eastern Europeans at their own game of Czech Nymphing – let alone the teams from the rest of Europe. Its going to be fun though and we are extremely excited for things to start!
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