My former Eldorado - Prologue

My Former Eldoradoes - Secrets of the Masters

Prologue

      Spring 2006, the editors of Wiadomości Wędkarskie came up with the idea of a series of articles about the best fisheries in Poland and asked - among other things - me to write something on the subject. Already at that time something told me that this was some kind of attempt to probe information about the few already attractive fisheries. I didn't want to suspect wrongly, but I remembered how once a colleague of mine from Boleslawiec (Bogdan Sz.) inadvertently - in a wider circle - splashed about the lower Kwisa River as a motherlode of fat brook trout. We did not have to wait long for the results! Soon whole busloads of spinning expeditions, in just a few weeks, effectively cleaned this beautiful and wild section of the river. And don't ask me what license plates these buses full of meat-eaters had! So I decided to take a slightly broader look at the fisheries where I was fortunate enough to fish before they were effectively degraded to their then current state. Either Mr. and Mrs. Editor didn't like this approach, or - which I dare to suspect - it was a retaliation of a certain activist from Krakow, nicknamed Bula, for the fact that in the pages of WW I once dared to criticize the nonsensical regulations on fishing in the waters of the Krakow Community, and which he himself probably invented.

This article of mine has by some miracle survived in my computer resources. I found it recently and was astonished to find that the problems I noticed back in April 2006, absolutely fit - and worse - have become even more pronounced in our 2020.

And now I am quoting this article - in extenso.

Wojciech Węglarski

My Former Eldoradoes - Secrets of the Masters

         If, with my hand on my heart, today I wanted to point out the Polish fishing „Eldorado” a.d. 2006, I would look in vain for one in our current waters. Unless, of course, I would start to look around for artificially dory fisheries, often called commercial. But after all, this is not the point of creating „Eldorados” based on commercial fishing. It is enough that for many years now the organizers of serious fly fishing events have been forced to dory the competition areas, moreover, to play them on live fish, in addition, with reduced protective dimensions. This is not the place to consider all the „pros and cons” of these - in the end - strange practices. In short, a necessary evil under the dictates of current conditions.

Unfortunately, year after year I helplessly watch the progressive degradation of our mountain rivers, and with increasing difficulty I search for places where I can pretend to enjoy fishing, without paying attention to such trifles as piles of garbage along the netted or concreted banks. For the devastation of the beds of streams and rivers in the so-called bygone period, one could accuse the so-called communism, which supposedly deliberately destroyed our heritage. But now? Who is still attempting to do so - with redoubled force, because with numerous „Eurofund” props?

                 But it was supposed to be about „Eldorado”, so to the point. Nowadays it is difficult, if not impossible, to find - within a radius of 150 km from Krakow - such a fly-fishing spot, where I was lucky enough to start my angling career in the early 1950s. If I had to choose some „Polish angling Eldorado” back then, it would take me a long time to choose among many places worthy of the name. Because if for a few-hour „jump” from Krakow, then, for example, the Raba River in the broad surroundings of Myslenice, in addition, its tributaries - now degraded and in the summer practically without water. So what can I recommend to our fly-fishing youth today? Is the Poręba Creek near Niedzwiedz, where, in the middle of the village, in holes up to the knees of water, one used to catch not at all ugly trout on a classic wet fly? Yes, but back then there were numerous trout hiding places in these holes in the form of, either partially submerged wicker bushes, or crumpled beams reinforcing the banks. Now we have concrete troughs with water up to our ankles with piles of garbage added every year. And this is how the river basins, which until relatively recently were among the top southern trout waters, look now. Well, and unfortunately, this applies to all waters where you can find the presence of dotty fish.

Recommended article:

History flytying / Polish names of flies

               Further, already several days„ trips were made to the Dunajec River, which resisted human thoughtlessness for the longest time, but I finally managed to manage it too. It used to be my most favorite fishery, with grayling fishing first and trout fishing second. It was a long stretch in the area of the Białka Tatrzanska estuary, through the area of Czorsztyn and Niedzica, up to the gates of the Pieniny Gorge at the mouth of Macelowy Potok. This section could be called the ”Eldorado," as it was once minimally touched by the paws of river regulators, and for much of its length retained its relatively wild character, which translated into fish and fishing results. It must be admitted that for many years I did not know ( and not only I) how to reach grayling. Dry fly in the years - let's say - 1960s (and also a little later) was still a purely literary concept. About the nymph method, even the weighted one, no one dreamed yet. At that time, the wet fly method reigned supreme with a jumper designed to imitate a dry fly, hence the amusing (especially from afar) sights of fly fishermen - mostly from the Podhale region, wading even on tiptoe, with flies stretched up as high as possible, so that the jumper danced across the water surface as far as possible from such an angler. From a distance, it looked like these people were trying to soar through the air. The fact that the dry fly went unnoticed by fly fishers for so long is probably due to Mr. Choynowski's well-established opinion in his book about the complete unsuitability of this method in the conditions of rough and rapid Polish mountain waters. And it was the only book on angling topics at the time, hence its huge opinion-forming role at the time.

                   Well, so I fished in the Dunajec River in the area of Angles with its once charming and fishy spots. What's left of it? Not much - a few faded photos and a memory of the wildness of those places, which are no longer there today. Back then it was a boarded-up hole with a narrow rocky road along the Dunajec River, often inundated in the lower parts by numerous summer floods. The appearance of a car or even a motorcycle there was a kind of local sensation. And as narrow as the passage was in places, e.g. under Macelowa Gora, (a bend slightly below the new rafting harbor), a photo remains showing the forcing of the road by a detour cinema heading to Sromowce Niżne.

Photo 1 -. 1958 - Dunajec River below Macelowa Gora

Photo 2 - 1958 - view from Angles to the corner where the rafting marina is now located                 

I would be lying if I said that there was an abundance of trout or grayling there at that time. There were definitely more trout in the Łopuszno-Dębno area, while here I fished for them sporadically on a classic wet fly, and in a not very convenient period, because July-August, as that was how my vacations were arranged. Wet flies purchased in the then only angling store in Cracow on Sienna Street, according to the guidelines from Mr. Choynowski's book, because where could I get patterns then? From local anglers who rarely looked in the Sromowce area? At that time there was a fetish for secret, supposedly deadly effective proprietary patterns of flies, so it was difficult to look something up from them. There was one, I won't give his name, extremely complacent and at the same time unsympathetic. The legend of his flies persistently circulated on the Dunajec River. Once I finally had the opportunity to watch these flies of his. And what: on small (then No. 14 , it's a tiny fly!) hooks beige and ash striped imitating the quills of the torso, blackberry ash (dun) or cream. Write out, paint out variants of imitation of tiny hackles, the so-called BWO (Blue Wing Olive). And the secret to success (because he had them)? Well, he was tall himself, and had a long fly, so he operated very effectively with a jumper dancing on the surface of the water. His star went out with the advent of the dry fly era. Incidentally, when we take a closer look at these various clown-created local celebrities, we can sometimes come to quite different conclusions from those circulated. It just so happened that I had the opportunity on several occasions to discreetly observe a much-vaunted spinning-head fisherman operating in the Czorsztyn area. This gentleman, yes, had beautiful distributions of fish, but few people knew that every morning (before work) and evening (after work) he plowed the bottom of the Danube pits with a heavy pendulum spinner armed with two huge anchors: in front and behind the sheet metal. Hence the great effectiveness in tearing barbel and hogfish on the wintering grounds (in the banya „under the Virgin Mary”). And that there have been hits of head fish? Since someone patrols a few of the deepest pits twice a day for months, he will eventually spot any steelhead and sooner or later give it a go. But did this practice have anything to do with so-called sport fishing? Judge for yourself. Also, to this day I have very serious doubts about the circumstances of catching, (by a local angler), in the banya above the mouth of the Białka River cephalopod - probably the first reported Polish record. According to the official version - caught on his own crankbait in the late afternoon, but why the next morning the fish was still soft, as if it had been caught a few hours earlier, and the night at that time was moonlit... And among the people who frequented the place, it was said that this angler was very keen on spinning at night and on dead fish, and the house stood close to the river... Of course, no one caught anyone by the hand, but we can see for ourselves how it sometimes happens with various local celebrities.

Photo 3 -. 1958 - view from Kąty to Zawroty, (road, „Babie” rock on the outflow of Jan Nędza's milling river and Zwoliński house)

               But let's return to my „Eldorado”. Few fly fishermen from the Podhale region at that time rarely ventured as far as there, having good fishing grounds much closer to their homes, well, and without exposing themselves to constant skirmishes with border guard officers, because, after all, the border ran in the middle of the current of the Dunajec River, and the border - as a certain military genius in the person of Lieutenant C. explained to me for a long time. - „is like a hair”! This was while explaining to this gentleman that fly-fishing from the shore without wading there is devoid of all sense, of course, in more polite words, so as not to offend the Authority. So it was different later with my wading, once I even landed for a few hours at the WOP watchtower below the Three Crowns. For that, it was pleasant to see what was happening on the surface of the water when, later in the summer, the so-called white fly (Origoneuriella Rhenana) began to emerge. Such a boiling of the water will probably never be seen again! What was alive, noisily preyed on these insects. Also, we are unlikely to see again the phenomenon of a local eclipse of the setting sun, obscuring its disk with a cluster of many millions of these flies in mating flight, and so much so that it temporarily became suddenly dark, until shivers ran down your spine! For the sake of historical truth, I have to tell you that the period of white fly mating was a perennial curse for fly fishers. What did I scramble to get something to collect my fly from the water surface boiling from various fish. Finally I came up with a secret that I had painstakingly protected for many years. And why I was protecting it, you will see in the story about the Rožnov grayling. Well, I noticed that only „bundles” of flies are noisily collected from the surface in the form of a female manned by several males at once. Such a heavy and tasty package fell to the surface of the water, where it was immediately attacked by the fish. So I used large (even No. 4) dry flies with abundant bright blackberries. What was happening then! And how the anglers reacted when they saw that every cast I made was a tow, while they were thrashing the water unsuccessfully for small flies!

                   Well, in the following years people and machines came in, bands and retaining walls were built from boulders dug out of the current (because it was the easiest!), the riverbed was straightened and the banks were netted, and as a result fish habitats were eliminated. And after what remained a memory in old photographs, we have the current, not very interesting Sromovian section of the Dunajec, in addition, mercilessly occupied by thousands of anglers all year round.

The next, now fatal blow to our poor mountain river, a curse of the years of real socialism in Poland, a lasting reminder of the worst period in Poland's modern history, are the Czorsztyñska and Sromowska dams, obviously without a fish ladder, without a fish stocking center to compensate for the damage to fish stocks, from the promise to build which the then investor cleverly wriggled out of, although he solemnly promised representatives of ZG PZW.

                And what did we get for future generations? An enclave of muddy, summer-starved under-oxygenated water, that is, a habitat for bream, roach or other perch. And below these dams? In addition to the constant swings in the water level, the monstrous siltation of the watercourse, covering the stones with a brown layer of algae. On warm summer days - green carpets of algae effectively disturbing anglers EVEN with a dry fly. Multi-week (!!!) discharges of dirty brown water. By autumn - massive runoff of rotting long green algae. In a word - the degradation of the river, which has become mountainous in name only. This can be clearly seen from the fish stock. Because there you go: The barbel still persists, the marmot - which once had millions of mirrors flashing on the currents - has disappeared, the chub - the seemingly despised, but eagerly fished - has disappeared, a few dace, bleaks, small perches remain, and occasionally a pike can be found. There are, yes, some brook trout, which by some miracle withstand these conditions.

Photo 4 -. The road from Kąty in the direction of. Sromowce Średnich (foot of Macelowa Gora)

                  Unfortunately, the grayling didn't last, which is all the more tragic because until relatively recently it was the leading fish there that has an adipose fin. In my opinion, nothing will help, neither the first increased size limit, nor a further reduction in the daily limit, and recently even a three-year total ban on its fishing, although the intentions of such pulls deserve respect. This is not where the dog is buried! And you can't even claim that these are the results of years of stocking the Dunajec with invoices, (not fry), or even the cutting of grayling by nymphers, as some haunted fly fishermen are trying to make us believe. Let's accept the sad fact that the ecosystem of the Dunajec below Czorsztyn has degraded so far that we HAVE a mountain river! Ergo, grayling there will be rare, no matter what we do.

Why have I once again drifted away from the leading topic? Well, I am constantly oppressed by the thought of what to tell young fly fishers that they were born too late? That would be too brutal!

                  But let's go back to the time when the described section was my „Eldorado”. After years of hard struggle for grayling using wet flies, (I remind you - no one had a clue about nymphing at that time!), the time came when I started - as one of the first few - fishing with dry flies. At first I used flies bought from a well-known fishing store as dry flies. They were made on „mokromuch” (i.e. somewhat heavy) hooks, their hackles were poor and thin (class B or C) - all in all, there were sometimes problems with the buoyancy of these flies, despite various impregnations. I tried using, both liquid paraffin in gasoline, and finally a mixture of a few drops of silicone oil with anesthetic ether, which worked perfectly for a long time. It was a kind of showcase of my person during fishing trips. Fellow fly anglers repeatedly told me that when they smelled ether over the water, it was an inevitable sign that nearby Wojtek was fishing with a dry fly.

The poor quality of „state” flies, however, prompted me to work on my own in fly fishing, which after a few years resulted in many achievements in this field, especially in the form of two books that I'm sure you are familiar with.

And yes, I gradually worked out many dry, highly effective constructions, and - unlike many colleagues - I do not claim sole authorship of them, because I will never be sure that someone before me did not invent something like this. I will only recall here the not-so-clean manipulations around such flies as wet braids, „browns”, or so-called (disgustingly) „glaives”. This is a topic I do not intend to develop, lest I later feel stupid and ashamed not for myself.

1962 upper - July, one afternoon I jumped out of the way to see if the Dunajec had already cleared sufficiently, because in the evening I was going to go with a fly. By the way, I took a spinning rod - and after less than 10 minutes I returned to the bench near the Knutelskis' house with a loggerhead about 75 cm long !

Photo 5 -. 1962 upper - July, one afternoon I jumped out of the way to see if the Dunajec had already cleared sufficiently, because in the evening I was going to go with a fly. By the way, I took a spinning rod - and after less than 10 minutes I returned to the bench near the Knutelskis' house with a loggerhead about 75 cm long !

Photo 5 -. 1962 lower - July - Marek Palik - for the first time in his life - takes a look at my cephalopod                    

Back to „my” dry flies. The closer to autumn, the smaller the flies, but without exaggeration. Using the „mustad” numbering, (because every company, the numbering is different), I did not go with the size below No. 20, and only in the case of the so-called Black Sequoia (e.g. Last Hope, Little Chap - for November-February). September, (because that's when the grayling began to move slowly to dry), were widely variants of Greenwell's Glory, but with a tail, because they swam better. Numbers 14-18, and most often 16, often a short shank hook - this is so that the fly is „grippier”. Blackberry, badger in shades from beige to j. brown. Around September 20, (at a time when it was possible to infer something from the behavior of the numerous grayling in the Dunajec at that time), there was a change in the color of the blackberry from beige to grizzly or dun. Thoraxes - as before - shades of yellow or light olive. And that was enough! I repeatedly found that there was something in it, since from a grayling gutter previously unsuccessfully fished with a brown-veined midge, after changing it to gray tones, I was able to immediately raise (and catch) several grayling from the same spot. It sounds a bit like a fantasy today, but I've processed it on my own.

Later, so in October, a fly of lethal effectiveness turned out to be No. 16 with a trunk made of c. ash (almost black) condor coils. The wings, of course, ashen from a wild duck, because who had heard of CDC back then! I attribute the construction of this fly with condor and grizzly blackberry with the highest probability of their authorship possible in such cases.

                    This type of fly seen off from me became the beginning of the end of a flock of dozens of magnificent fat grayling, which until the mid-1970s existed, in fact, in three currents of the so-called Dunajec channel below the Roznow dam, on obviously lowland water. Only a few ethical fly fishermen from Cracow knew about the existence of these fish there, at first, with whom I used to go on cloudy days in October for a few hours of dry fly fishing at the so-called zero flow, which we sometimes found for those few hours of fishing, and sometimes we had to wait for a few hours without any guarantee of stopping the water. Oh, such a lottery. Grayling were not measured there! The smallest that were caught there were about 32 cm (and returned to the water), while the largest (caught) were 42-44 cm, although I do not rule out that even larger cardinals lived there, which did not want to raise to a dry fly anymore. On a good day it was possible to „notch” them several „tsar” sets, („tsar” set = 7 pcs, with the then norm of 5). But we respected these grayling and never stuffed the baskets with over-complete sets. The eldorado quickly ended when once, out of the kindness of my heart, I disclosed this secret place to my friend from Myslenice asking for discretion, as this is news only for him. He promised to keep his word. Well, imagine, I arrive one Sunday in October and already from afar, on the known current under the hill I see a crowd of fly fishermen, I come closer - and blood flooded me! Among the think anglers, of course, reigns my colleague, the name I will not mention. I just asked him if he remembered what he promised me. He started mumbling something about the dirty water up the Dunajec River, so he brought them here. I turned on my heel and drove to Melsztyn. By November, this waddle had cleaned the place almost to nothing! And so ended the famous Rožnov grayling, and I swore to myself that I would never betray, neither the fishery nor the lure, and I would never fool around with reporting some record there. Older readers probably remember the scandal with the records of a certain Waldemar G. from Zagłębie. This is what record- and medalomania leads to!

In the same way, „anglers” I know finished off numerous asps there (in the 1980s), taking well on wet flies. Among them was also a member of the National Team at that time! To this day I can't imagine how he and his family managed to devour such large numbers of asps that he caught there at the time (because it had nothing to do with sport fly fishing).

By the way, you met my former second „Eldorado” - grayling in autumn (dry), asp in spring (wet Cinnamon and Yellow).

                        Let's return once again to those grayling from the upper Dunajec River. I have already described the flies, now a little closer about the method, because what I sometimes observe in fly fishers thinking that they are fishing with a dry fly, makes me smile with sincere pity.

In those good times for fly fishing I got a two-part, very subtle glue blanks, ordered in Cracow from the then famous Mr. Eugeniusz Gut. Whether he glued the blanks, or rather took them from Mr. Jozef Pajor and only armed them with a handle and guides - I don't know for sure, because it was said differently in Cracow. From what I know from Mr. Pajor, whom I often visited in his apartment, the latter is rather true. Anyway - it was a very delicate grayling glue line with a class of - I estimate - AFTMA 4. To this, first home-made varnish impregnated backing line, because who had a western fly line in Poland at that time! It threw such a set poorly and not too far, and completely bad in the wind. The only advantage of such a line, (popularly called „gaci”), was that the set lay on the water b. softly (without splashing). Well, and grayling back then were not as punched out as they are nowadays, and they mesh close to the angler.

          As it „stands” in any fly fishing manual, a dry fly given to grayling ALWAYS MUST flow flawlessly. Thus, casting, either upstream, the fly then flows on us choosing the slack of the line fast enough (very tiring!), or releasing the fly downstream to the length of its free flowing, that is, not too great (up to about 2 m). The latter way is less tiring and yet effective. The whole secret of grayling success is to pass the fly in such a way that it overlaps the fish without the slightest streaking. And, of course, the size and shade of the fly are important, but let's not exaggerate with this.

If we describe the way of guiding a fly as No. 1, then No. 2 will be its size (in the sense of silhouette), and only No. 3 the shade. But at the very beginning of No. 0 - we fish where the fish is, and where the fish is is: we either spotted the mesh, (once after something like this grayling was in the basket in a moment), or Polaroids helped us, or the location of the fish was suggested by experience.

About access to the former „Eldorado” I do not mention, because nowadays you can get anywhere. What was different, say those 40-50 years ago. Back then you would have to explain at length and intricately how to get where you wanted. There were numerous wildernesses, but there were fish.

Instead of trophy photos (who wanted to carry a heavy camera back then, especially since we mostly fished alone), there are a few photos of the old Dunajec River in Kąty from 1958. 1958, when the granite pebbles in this river were still white, when on the banks, instead of alder and wicker jungles, there were lovely meadows with mountain thistles, junipers and white pungent grass, when instead of gray boulders in mesh bags there were steep pebble slopes, when instead of a meadow with post-flood byways and a millstream from the then active mill, we have a noisy molehill in the form of a rafting harbor with all its pub-like surroundings.

The angel-white flocks of geese there are missing, and the clusters of red cows that once grazed there are no longer visible.

For this, under the charming Macelowa Mountain, instead of a charming side stream along a tiny oblong stone island - a nightmare booth of a local photographer snapping souvenir photos of rafters.

Oh, progress, oh - the 21st century!

Krakow, April 11, 2006 Wojciech Węglarski