Just back from our family holiday in Slovenia and I've put together pictures from an enjoyable morning on the catch and release section of the Radovna in NE Slovenia.

Before leaving I searched the forum and read earlier contributions from Stevel and BlueOne among others. As we were based near Lake Bohinj for the first week I decided the higher part of the Radovna would be my prefered type of fishing, small brown trout and a quiet location without rafts, canoes and other tourists.

To make the most of my fishing day I bought my ticket the day before. This turned out to be a Sunday with everything closing at 1pm so a quick dash around Bled to find tourist office. Very helpful chap searched internet, made a couple of calls and directed me up to the Vintgar restaurant at the start of the tourist board walk along the spectular gorge at the end of the fishing sections.



[Vintgar Restaurant - live fish for restaurant in boxes in river]

I felt like a kid again on June 15th walking into the restaurant to buy the ticket. This feeling increased when the landlady produced the beautiful tickets. A guilty pleasure spending more on one day ticket than I do for a season with my local club.

From Star Fuzina at Lake Bohinj it was bit of a drive to the river but some ex pats were kind enough to show me a cross country route which would save going via main roads to Bled.



I was away by 5:30am and had soon left the Bohinj lake mist behind as I took the hire car rather faster up the winding hill roads than I had been doing with the family the rest of that week.



Finally I turned over the bridge on the take section of the river at Krnica and then headed up the road and then unsurfaced road that followed the marking the river were 150 metres from the track. Vested up I headed across the field to the river. Down a steep woody slope and finally onto the river bank at a shallow clear run. I decided to head downstream to start and Teva waded across to reach the clearer bank. Blimey, first step in the water and I regreted leaving the waders behind (used pair of grippy Tevas). The water was so cold it made my legs ache.



I worked downstream and cut across the bottom of a cow pasture and found a good spot to tackle up on a gravel spit between a downstream riffle and upstream pool. The clear water was mesmarising and the air noticably cooler down on the river. By the time I was tackled up the cows, bells genlty clanking, had crowded around the electric fence to watch.

The river was mainly shallow runs with the occasional deep pool. Plenty of fallen trees and woody debris on the stretch but I couldn't find anything in the shallow water or in the pocket water around occasional boulders. As the air warmed up and before the sun cleared the hills surrounding the valley, mist started to rise from the river.

I started with a tungsten nymph but soon got bored and switched to a Klinkhammer which would at least be fun to watch and search the water as I worked up stream. Finally a flash of brownie / gold as a small trout slashed at the Klink as I worked up the margin of a fast deep central run.

I blanked that run but shortly the next pool came into view - greeny / turquoise, with a smooth tail over small gravel. This looked really promising so I changed to a lighter set up, a single feather ISBB on .10mm tippet. This did the job and I quickly had a beautiful pale wild brownie in my hand.







A pattern for the morning developed. Search shallow stretches with a Klinkhammer until reaching the tail of a pool. Then maximum stealth and a switch to a small ISBB to pick up the small trout hugging the bottom in the fast water at the tail of the pools.



The best trout of the day was the only fish I saw rising. He made an enthusiastic head and shoulder charge out of the water to intercept the fly. After working the dry fly I'd swop over to a tungsten head nymph for the deeper water. This wasn't as much fun but it would usually pick up a couple more fish.







By midday I was shattered and ready for lunch. It was an energetic morning wading and scrambling through woods and undergrowth to work up the river. A very enjoyable morning fishing totally undisturbed on a beautiful stretch of river.

Nigel

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"If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong." John Gierach

Great report, loved the pictures, thanks for taking the time to share.

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Eddie
"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
Voltaire

Super report. Amazing how the trout looks a lot paler than ours, to almost match the same colour as the river

Nigel,

Great post and pictures, it makes me ache to back there, it's a wonderful country. With luck I shall be back again this winter for another go at some sulec (hucho).
However I must say that the posts you are referring to are BlueOne's, being extremely knowledgeable and generous of it and his time. I'm just another enamoured with the place, and lucky enough to have been befriended by him, and given the opportunity to see a side of his country's fishing that most don't, and sometimes unfortunately choose not to see or look for.

Regards,
Steve

Cheers for the comments guys. It certainly is a magical place, quality of the water and landscape. Sad though to see the stockies and quite a bit of Himalayan Balsam along some of the river banks.

Stevel - I saw some black trout around same size as the stockies on the P. Sora. Would they have been young hucho or marble or just different strain of Rainbow?

Nigel

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"If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong." John Gierach

Nigel,

To be honest, I don't know what they are, I'd have to defer to BlueOne.
I consulted the chart of Slovene fish he kindly sent me and there didn't appear to be any black fish. Any (huge, at 1.2m or more) stuffed marbles or hucho I saw in the local tackle store didn't look any darker than any other brown trout.
I haven't seen a hucho up close and personal (yet!) but some pics I saw of BlueOne's huchos (he's developed a pretty effective lure imitating the hucho's favourite food the lamphrey) and they actually looked pretty silvery/grey.

Regards,
Steve

Lovely pics and has already been said very pale looking Trouts, the picture of the trout in the water (no.9) is a cracker

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I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the one thing I can think of that probably doesn't.

Marbles are not present in P. Sora, they are only native in the rivers of Adriatic drainage basin.

Regarding black fish, there is no black trout as such, on the other hand, you can come across very dark fish if you catch it in such a spot that it must be dark. Otherwise if there is a lot of them around they are most probably stockies which often tend to be darker. But as said if you would catch a wild rainbow or brownie from for example a hole under rock etc. or dark bottom area it could be much darker than the rest.

Hocho would normally appear "grayish" in water, again depending on the habitat, you could see chubs as another option which normally look sort of brown.

Hard to say what you came across, but as said, if lots of those were there and all over the place a good guess would be stockies.

What you expirienced used to be normal on all slovene waters. Yesterday i was fishing with wingnut and the upper section of the river we were fishing has similar conditions like upper Radovna and used to be a paradise with lots of small brownies, very beautifully colored. Now they are dropping big stockies in that part. A fish which does not belong there, has 0 chances of survival and will only damage wild population. The only luck is, that the condition there are so harsh, that those stockies that are not taken (at least it has not been turned into maximum usage of stockies section called C&R) have a short life span.

We had some fun on wild parts of that river with wild rainbows, nice fish but also another problem connected with stocking, introduction of invasive specie, 20 years ago this would be a brown trout/graylling water, now it is wild rainbow/graylling water with a few brownies left. Stevel would be familiar with this place.