San cup, San river, Poland, 17-19. October 2013

San is a famous and very interesting river for flyfishers in Southern-Poland. It has a special character, very wide riverbed, and shallow, cristal clear water. The river is full of fish, big graylings and brown trouts, but sometimes incredibly difficult to catch them and requires special techniques.

 San Cup (or officially San II. Lech Straszkiewicz Emlékverseny,október 18-19-20 ) is a round of the Hungarian Flyfishing Chanpionship (organised by the Association of the Hungarian Flyfishers, MŰHOSZ, www.muhosz.hu ), and takes place every year in October since 2006. I am not a competitor type and don't really like fishing - especially flyfishing -  competitions, but I love the atmosphere, its challenge, the river itself, so I only missed one event, and took part now on the 7. time.
In the first years I could hardly catch a single fish as had no much experience in grayling fishing, but after several years of practice and experience the results came.
Probably because of this grayling is still my favourite fish, as it was a dream to finally catch one.
The suggested accommodation is Pension Gawra (http://gawra.bieszczady.pl/?lang=en), cheap but nice place with good meals, and friendly hosts. Especially Edyta:)! IT is olny cca 200 m from the river, and you can buy the fishing licence there (they sell the normal licence, but can arrange also to licence for the Catch&Release part, someone from the fishing club takes the licences to the hotel). Price is cca 20 eur / 70-75 zloty.
In my opinion the best parts are on Catch & release section at the island and at the water power plant, on the normal "kill" part from the bridge south from Garwra till section border upstream are all good, espcecially nearby Salamadra hotel or the coinfluence with Hoczevka stream and at the "prison". There are several good places, just look for the spots which are flowing a little bit and has some depth.
If you like lake fishing, the Solina lake is also an option mainly with rainbow trouts.

About this year fishing:

We arrived on 17. oct in the afternoon after cca 6.5 hours drive (from Sóskút/Budapest) in a DACIA DUSTER (great car, really!, unfortunatelly not mine:)  with my French fishing mate. (we planned to leave  at 4 am, but Christian arrived to my place at 5:30, argh..:)
I also prepare with own flies, but I trust in the local flies better, and try those ones first, so on route we bought the nymps and dry flies in the fishing shop in Sanok (http://topfly.com.pl/lang-en/content/4-o-nas) what the owner, Adam suggested us. Quick check in at the hotel and we went to the C&R part.
I was fishing, Christian was sleeping in the car (woke up too early and was very tired..:)
 I was pleased to immediatelly recognise the intensive hatch and activity on the river surface, but I trust in long nymphing with monofil better, so I started with this one. I already cought a nice, cca 35 cm grayling for the second cast.

It was followed by several nice graylings from 30 to 40 cm, plus a big one, 43-44 cm.

I changed nymp to dryfly, and that worked well too. Fish were active till 5pm.
In the evening, as usual, get together, meet with long not seen fishing mates, chat&flytying. You can collect all important news about Hungarian flyfishing society during these times!
Second day was the day of the Competition, AM, kill section. I was very-very tired, couldn't concentrate, and my tactic was a disaster, long nymp with monofil, is shallow slow water, strong wind and rain, so I could catch only one normal size grayling, one small and several trouts, which do not count in the competition (brown trouts are prohibited to catch in October).

The PM part on C&R section of the competition was much better. I cought 3 nice fish including the biggest grayling of my life, 49 cm!

 I lost cca 5-6 ones between 30 and 40 cm, and cought cca the same amount of small graylings, and a nice brownie. The big grayling turned out to be the biggest one in the competition!
Dry fly worked much better than the nymph.
Next day: AM lake fishing part of the competition.

 Nice, sunny weather, totally 0=Zero activity. Most of us didn't catch a single fish, including me. End of competition.
 PM: The Local Polish expert, captain of the Polish Flyfishing Team (anyone could help with a name? probably Piotr Koniesny but i can not spell or find on the net) showed us some great techniques how to be more succesful on river San (and probably on other rivers)  - extremely useful!
Then we left with Christian for cca 1, 1.5 h hours fishing late afternoon on the kill part (Christian was very efficient, 4-5 nice graylings, cca 30-35 cm, i only cought smaller ones).

at 5 pm we had to end fishing. For me it was probably the end of the fishing season. Start in next April/May.
SAN HAS NEVER BEEN SOO GOOD, lot of fish, good sized fish! THANK YOU!
In the evening the winners got their medals and trophies, I received my well deserved trophy for the biggest fish!:) and we had to depart, back home...
I wish I has some more time, but I will be back!