"From the Water" - Fly Fishing Kačák Stream near Hostim

September was drawing to a close when I suddenly realized, with some horror, that I hadn't been fishing for more than three weeks. I also realized that the number of my visits to trout waters was becoming increasingly disproportionate to the price I had paid for my fishing permit. Unfortunately, the situation with trout waters in my immediate area is rather poor, and the closest one is the small Loděnice stream, also known locally as Kačák.

If you Google fly fishing on Kačák and dig into the various discussions that come up in the search results, you will inevitably reach the conclusion that Kačák is not exactly a place you visit for the fish. If someone decides to head there with a fly rod, desperation is probably the main reason. That was exactly what crossed my mind when I got up at around 6 a.m. and remembered my last visit to Kačák, which had ended with a humiliating blank. But as someone who knows the area well, I also know that even if the fishing on Kačák can be rather poor, every visitor has to appreciate the beautiful countryside around Svatý Jan pod Skalou and many other places in the Bohemian Karst.

Kačák, however, had quite a surprise in store for me this time. I parked by the bridge in Hostim, quickly confirmed what I already suspected - that the U Krobiána pub was closed at this hour - and a few moments later I was already fishing my way upstream. I lost the first fish, but even so I got a glimpse of what looked like a beautiful yellow belly. I ruined the next two promising spots by casting into a bush and then into some balsam, creating enough disturbance to put off any fish that might have been holding there. Well, when fishing a small stream, even an experienced angler gets it wrong sometimes.

The next pool produced what was, by Kačák standards, a decent brown trout, and that was pretty much how the rest of the session went - a lost fish, a snagged balsam, another small brown trout. Not to exaggerate, but in less than two hours I landed five brown trout and lost another five. There seemed to be no coarse fish in the stream at all. Perhaps they didn't appreciate the cold, rainy weather, or maybe most of the chub had already moved back downstream into the Berounka River.

The tactics for fishing Kačák were simple - work your way carefully upstream with a shorter fly rod, a floating fly line and a single nymph. The nymph you use on Kačák shouldn't be too heavy, because in such shallow water a heavy fly will snag the bottom far too often. In some of the deeper pools, however, it can be worth switching from a lighter fly to a heavier one.

There isn't much more wisdom I can share from Kačák, apart from one useful piece of information: even when I left at around 9 a.m., U Krobiána was still closed. That was probably the biggest disappointment of my latest fishing trip to Kačák.

Video: Fly Fishing on Kačák - Loděnice Stream