A week after National Youth Championship in Castingsport and two weeks before Nation Youth Championship in floating fishing there was another national competition prepared. A competition combining castingsport and floating fishing together. National round of Zlatá udice (Golden Line) took place in South Bohemia since Friday to Sunday.
There is no more complex competition for young fishing girls and boys than the Zlatá udice. A competition called "Fishing Olympic Games" in 60ths changed its rules and changed the name to "Zlatá udice". The competition exists since 1974 for every year till now.
During the competition young fisher proves her/his fishing know-how in theoretical and practical way. With paper test proving know-how in several fishing areas like national fishing law or Czech Angling Union code of rules. In a special room she/he meets various fish, water fauna and flora for recognizing and proving about knowing their names. Then proving know-how about working with fishing tackles during casting sport competition. And also proving know-how from fishing during floating fishing competition. Catching fish bite, hack the fish and get it out of water.
It is not possible to make one competition for all the young fishing girls and boys and so the competition is divided in area and district rounds. It begins in towns and cities, the best children go to the district rounds and again the best ones go to territorial rounds.
Six best territorial children moves to National round and fight for their territory. When everything goes fine, eight six-member teams meet and fight for individual and team trophies.
Territorial round of Moravian Angling Union was prepared close to Znojmo and 4 boys, 1 girl and 1 junior of Kroměříž, Brno and Jihlava were selected. It was Jan who was representing Jihlava
We expected it would not be easy. Team of last year won the competition in 2021 and only one competitor remained in the team, others were new and participated such huge action for their very first time. Even last year trainers could not join the team. So whole team was almost completely new. Only Robert in U18 category and Karel Netolický, floating fishing trainer was there last year.
Michal Danác was selected as team leader. He was experienced from competitions that he had participated 15 years ago. Team members were fathers of two boys from team, father of Matěj and father of Robert. And of course - Karel Netolický.
Team got to place one day earlier to check the fishing place. It was Vltava, the river flowing throughHluboká nad Vltavou city. A sector about 4 meters deep and slow current was good for catching common bleaks or common breams or carps.
But the official opening was done on Friday afternoon in Vodňany, the place where accommodation was prepared for all.
After the opening first part of competition started - the knowledge part.
From around 280 questions 50 was selected. All the 280 questions are published for several months so each competitor has the change to prepare for this part of competition. As well as for recognition of fish, fauna and flora. From about 60 fish the 20 was selected, from 55 fauna 15 was selected and from 50 flora 15 was selected.
Jan from Jihlava was preparing himself since he got the information he was selected to the team of Moravian Angling Association. He was preparing himself hard and that is why he had only 1 wrong answer in the test. But the other were also great, another 3 guys had only one mistake and even another 4 guys had no mistake. The recognition part decided about the winner. Jan was able to see live fish for his first time and got new experience - all the fish are very small (to be able to spend time in small aquarium). He recognized 16 fish of 20. He had problems with small bleak and nase. Got only about half of points from fauna and only 4 pieces of flora was wrong.
Jan was the best of Moravian team but he was the 14th in his category. Rest of the team was worse, this part of competition was not good for Moravian Angling Union. After this part the team was fifth with only a small chance to get a medal.
Second day and fishing part came. Floating fishing. The organizer prepared a sector often used for 1st league of floating fishing. Grass was cut perfectly and no problem was found. The only problem was it was a very warm day. Very hard to spend whole day on the sun till 18:00.
The second day was a day of Karel Netolický, a wizard of floating fishing that was helping to Moravian team for several years and helped the team also this year. Could not call him no different way but a wizard as 3 boys got between first 10 fishers. Matěj was second, the youngest boy Karel was sixth and Tomáš was seventh. And Robert won his junior category. Jan was the worst. He caught a carp and 4 breams but could not get them out of the water. What a pity.
But he was not the only boy having problems, every team had its own Jan having a big problems with fishing. For Moravian Angling Association the result was great. Thanks to Karel Netolický the team won this part of competition and got from fifth place to second after two parts. Fantastic performance.
On first place there was a team of East Bohemia leading 3 points. Moravia was the second and two another teams were 1 point behind - Moravian-Silesian team and West Bohemia team. Final rank should be decided by last part - casting sport.
Sunday morning without clouds. Nice grass field of Borovany was crossing by organizers checking already prepared target events like arenberg and skish targets. As usual this year, head-wind came. Fortunately a weak wind.
Moravia team included two guys having experience with casting only during winter training time inside gyms. No experience with fly events. The rest of them consisted of casters. Matěj and Jan had got medals at national casting championship a week ago and Robert is a part of junior national team.
We knew we were out of chance comparing to the team of Moravian-Silesian district so the question was - what about the other teams. And the main question - what about us?
The fight for medal position holding begun.
The only person not casting fly skish was Valentýna. She had a problem with her eye since morning and we were happy she had no other problem. The eye problem affected her casting anyway so we did not want to torture her more. With boys we tried everything. Tomáš had one fly skish training so we had the lengths for dry casts but nothing for wet casts. So we improvised. The stress and nerves played their role too and so line was laid on the left, then on the right, sometimes in the front of the target. When it looked well he hit the target during false casts. And so on, and so on. But we got at least 15 points.
We did not even try dry casts with Karel. But we saw he had had some training of wet casts so we prepared and gave him fast lesson about casting for dry cast to the first target and then only wet casts. And Karel was able to hit two targets, perfect work for a boy with about month of casting career and first time fly skish casting.
Jan had been fighting with fly skish since last week and there was no time for training so it was a fight today too. During casting he did tangle the line twice and he even could not finish the event in time. Matěj had similar problems although he is much more experienced. Touched target during false cast, five targets perfectly laid but not to the target but left or right of it. But 70 point was above the average result of all casters so it helped the team. Robert took his leader role seriously and hit the 100 points.
Then wind started to be unpleasant. Results could be done but would be better in better wind. Probably best Czech junior target caster Robert had 100 and 100 at arenberg and skish so did lead his category by 32 points. Karel improved his best arenberg result by 18 points, others had lower arenberg results comparing to district ZU round. At skish our boys took their chance and at situation where other casters had results from 40 to 60 points, Moravian boys had 70 and 80 points. Other had their expected result so great performance at last target event.
The Organizer tried to be checking wind direction all the time and so he decided to prepare distance event with wind direction from left to right to provide casters a chance not to hit themselves during leading the fly line. Unfortunately almost right after the starting fly distance the wind changed it to head-wind. Casters not experienced with making tight loops had they lines laying in one big stack about 25 meters in front of them after casting. Not many caster was able to get over 25 meters. Matěj and Jan was able to do it so they both got over 50 points. Tomáš was not able to make a tight loop and so he had a big problem with cast over 25. Finally he got there at least one cast so his new personal record. As Karel that improved his best result by 7 more points. A big surprise was Valentýna. She was the only guy that did perfect loops and so she had both casts 10 meters longer than she had during district round. Best result was done by Robert that got over 46 meters. No other junior got more by a cast or by a sum of casts.
And spinning distance was finishing the competition. We accomplished the aim - have at least one cast in the sector. Then older boys tried to cast more with more power and less technique. So other casts got out of sectors. Robert was fighting with Dominik of Moravian-Silesian team. Both got over 60 meters but Robert had some 80 centimeters more.
Checking pentathlons boys of Kroměříž were great. Karel improved his pentathlon by 40 points. Robert got over 480 points, 38 points more than second best junior. But based on teams ranking there no counting of pentathlons but raking in category. And Moravian-Silesian team was simply much better. But Moravian team was the second best team in ranking. Robert got 1st place, Matěj was fifth and Jan sixth. Even Tomáš was not bad, 13th place is his best one so far.
And competition was over. All raking of all parts of it was count and lowest count determined the winner. And so we saw Matěj and Robert at the podium of best three.
although other were as good as Robert and Matěj, the team result was great. Moravian Angling Association had the same result as Moravian-Silesian district. Following rules the ranking of the first part determined the winner and so Moravian team was finally the second. Great result for almost completely new team.
At last, we must thank all the parents that supported their children. In some cases they bought new equipment just to give their child a better chance and it helped a lot. Also we want to thank the parents that joined the team and spent whole weekend with them. And also thank to Michal Danác and Karel Netolický for their great support. Without them the result would be probably different.
... and next time we must be much more prepared for the fauna and flora tests :)