Radovna

View from the Gostilna Vintgar hotel room

After a 12 hour journey we made it to the Radovna river. We stayed at the “Gostilna Vintgar” hotel (Website). A nice hotel, situated right next to the banks of the beautiful Radovna river. They serve great food and the service is perfect. You can also buy your licences (€39,- a day) there. It’s a 15 minute drive from the city Bled. It’s a fast alipne river with lots of of rapids followed by deep pools. Perfect for all kinds of flyfishing.

The waterlevels weren’t perfect. It haden’t rained and snowed this little in 70 years. That meant very low waterlevels. Fishing was still possible, but it didn’t predict good things for the upcoming flyfishing season. For us it meant looking for the deeper pools, where the fish would school up, and fish there. For me that wouln’t be a problem, because I’m a short-line nymphing fanatic. Fishing deep and/or fast pools with a nymph is kind of my thing. But for those of us who loved to fish a little dryfly and stalk the fish in the slower waters, that would be a problem.

Difficult fishing conditions

Perfect nymphing water were the fish would hold up

The Radovna holds mainly brown trout. The occasional rainbow trout and brook trout can also be caught. Sadly no grayling here. The fish aren’t realy big, but their lack of size is compensated by their beauty. The colours of the fish are astonishing.

Beautiful colours

Not only brownies, the fish not only loved nymphs, they also loved heavy tungsten marabou streamers

One of the bigger rainbow trout

The Slovenians take good care of their fish. They started a tagging program a while ago, and as you can see, it works!

Incredible clear waters, but can you spot the trout?

Small fish didn't mind taking a big, heavy tungsten stonefly nymph

They also loved my jig-Bombas!

Some fish where willing to take a dryfly

Sava Bohinjka

After three days of great fishing it was time for us to drive to the Sava Bohinjka river. The fishing had opened only three days ago, so we would be able to fish water that hadn’t realy been fished this year.

The first day of fishing was perfect. I caught massive amounts of fish. Incredible how hungry the fish were. Usually these kind of numbers can only be caught in the pools were fresh fish just have been stocked. But somehow the resident fish where also taking flies like crazy. You can quite easily tell the difference between a fish that has been freshly stocked, and a resident fish that has been born, or has been living in the river for a long time.

Freshly stocked rainbow

Resident rainbow. Can you see the difference?

We were staying at the appartments of Emil Pintar (Website). A perfect place near the river.

Of all the rivers I’ve had the pleasure to fish in, the Bled part of the Sava Bohinjka is without a doubt my favourite river. It’s a fast river, with lots of rapids, very deep pools, and some slow water at the end of pools. There are lots of big, beautiful and strong fish in this part. It’s mainly a nymphing river, but it’s also possible to catch large amounts of fish on a dryfly when there at the right place at the right time.

A nice variantion of pools

Water conditions were great. Altough the waterlevel was lower than normal, it was still perfect for fishing. The only worry was the upcoming rain that was forecasted. It would start to rain somewhere in the next couple of days.

The river at the Bohinjska Bela club house

Perfect nymphing water

Strong rainbow trout from the Sava Bohinjka

The fish in the Sava Bohinjka are mainly rainbow trout. There are also lots of graylings, and the occasional brown trout.

Strong and nicely coloured rainbow trout. They loved the Simon Templer nymph!

Grayling love some pink in the flies!

Another strong rainbow trout

The fish at the Sava Bohinjka also loved the bomba!

Even tiny grayling took the heavy tungsten jig nymphs

Another nicely marked rainbow

Bad weather

After a great day of fishing, the weather turned around. It started to rain. Usually a bit of rain won’t hurt. But because of the long dry winter season, a lot of sand and dirt was still lying around. A heavy rain would flush all of that sand and dirt into the river. Not very good for fishing. And what we were affraid of happened. The beautiful and prestine river turned into a mud monster!

A lot of dirty water was flowing into the river

More dirty water coming at us

We tried to fish a little, but needles to say, fishing wasen't any good

A depressing setting...

...

After an hour of fishing we decided the weather wasn’t going to change, and the water wouldn’t clear up the next couple of days, we decided it was best to drive home again. After we got back to the appartment Emil told us that if it would stop raining that evening we would still have a chance at fishing the next morning, so we decided to wait until the next morning. But the rain didn’t stop. Water was still terrible. We had 4 great days of fishing, so it was time for us to go home.

Going home...

Some pics:

History of the Klinkamer Special

Let’s start with a little history first. Hans was fishing the Glomma in Norway back in 1984. They were catching good amounts of grayling on very large (#8) red tags. But he wanted to tie something different for the grayling. So he started to gut some grayling, to find out what they were feeding on. He noticed that the few grayling he gutted had eaten very large emerging caddis pupa. They had very large curved bodies. That might have been the reason why large dries were favorable.

Hans started to tie some new flies, specially designed for this situation. The main thing he wanted to imitate was the large curved body. So he took a big grub hook and tied a dry parachute style fly. The results were amazing. The grayling loved the fly. He called his new creation the L.T. Caddis.

In 1886 Hans fished a lot more places throughout Europe, and he found that the L.T. Caddis worked very well in a lot of places and for trout as well. He even caught grilse salmon with his L.T. Caddis.

The name

In 1987 he wrote an article for a Dutch flyfishing magazine. The editorial staff thought the fly needed a different name. That’s why Hans de Groot gave it the famous name “Klinkhåmer Special”. It had a little Scandinavian sound to it, and it incorporated Hans his name.

The Klinkhåmer Special as seen from underneath the water surface (image credit: www.flyfishinggazette.com)

Tying the Klinkhamer Special (the correct way)

One of the most important characteristics of this fly is the large thin curved abdomen. That’s where a lot of people go wrong. They call a tiny little fly with a tiny curved and relatively fat body a Klinkhåmer. But it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, it will probably catch fish, but it’s not the Klinkhåmer Special. It must have a relatively large, curved and thin abdomen. You should really use just as little dubbing, to only cover the hook shank. Don’t be tempted to use a lot of dubbing. If you put on too little to cover the hook shank, you can always put a little bit more on.

The other thing a lot of people do wrong is the tying off part. The trick in making a durable fly is to tie the hackle off at the base of the parachute portion. Not at the eye of the hook. If you tie the hackle off behind the eye of the hook, you have to bring the hackle from the base of the parachute to the hook-eye. Because you tie it off at the very tip of the hackle, you have a weak point. If a trout touches the tiny hackle point with (however small) teeth, or you touch it with your pliers when taking the hook out, it’ll break. You should instead tie the hackle off and complete the fly around the base of the parachute. That way you don’t expose the very tip of the hackle and keep the fragile tip away from the trout’s teeth, and therefore make your fly a lot more durable. It’s very convenient to master the whip-finish by hand. You can also use a large whip-finishing tool.

Hans uses a different tread for tying off the fly. He uses spiderweb. I use it as well in the video. But instead, for speeding up things, you can also tie the complete fly with a thin thread like an 12/0 benecchi tread or something similar. That way you don’t have to change your thread when tying off. I find the spiderweb too fragile to use it for tying the whole fly. But if you can master your thread tension really good, you can use it for the complete fly. However, don’t be tempted to tie the fly off with a thicker thread like an 8/0 of 6/0. That way you bulk up the base of the parachute too much, and it will probably not float very well.

Now, enough talking, let’s tie the fly!

Materials used

• Hook: Partridge Klinkhamer Extreme #16
• Thread: 12/0 Benecchi (black) for main part, and Danville Spiderweb (white) for tying off part
• Abdomen: Fly-rite #25 (Cream Variant), Extra Fine Poly
• Thorax: Peacock herls
• Wing: White poly-yarn
• Hackle: Grizzly Genetic Cock neck hackle

The video

More info

If you want some more information about this fly, please visit Hans’s website at: www.flyfishinggazette.com

Last weekend we have fished some awesome places for pike. A couple of friends invited us to come fishing with them in their homewaters. And they take the term “homewaters” quite literally! The fishing spots were next to busy roads and in between houses!

Looking for fish…

For us, coming from the quiet south of The Netherlands, that was kind of strange. We are not used to fishing between cars and houses. But I’ll have to admit, it’s something special!

Philip fishing at someones front gate

After the first couple of minutes it becomes clear to me why these guys fish here. There’s simply a lot of pike!! Every little corner, bridge, intersection, and everywhere in between holds pike. Back home it has become normal for me to fish for pike a long day, and maybe see one or two. So I feel spoiled here! The amazing thing is the guys told me the pike weren’t even in their best taking mood. When the water becomes colder, the pike seem to concentrate even more on certain area’s, and they do so in large numbers.

Brian with his first fish

Not every pike is big, but they sure put up a good fight!

Edwin’s EP GM pikefly (dyckers.com)

Sander fighting his fish

Sander with his pike

Pieter-Bas fishing the Dutch polder

Oehh mama! Pieter-Bas with his fish

A good fishing trip isn’t complete without a bit of playing with fire…

And some good food!

Yours truly fighting a fish

Pike!!

A good hotspot

EP-Pike streamers catch a lot of pike!

Nice pike for Brian

Edwin with his catch

Me and another pike

Brian caught this fish almost literally at his feet

Me and another pike

There were no monster pike caught, but there are 1 meter + pike in these waters… You just have to find them! One thing is for sure, before the ice appears on the “polders” I’ll be back to look for them!