Huchen Slam in Slovenien

Wow. This Monsterfish is kicking in from our man Jure in beautiful SLO country from the River Sava.
This is what he wrote:

Hey Michael.

Huchen fishing has a long tradition in Slovenia and specially in the fishing club Bled where I am a member.

Season for huchen starts on 1.st of October and ends on 14.th of February. Usually we fly fish untill it gets around 0 degrees celsium, later we go spinn fishing (exept a few crazy ones like me).

Huchen fishing is the toughest fly fishing method of them all, and quite some days we go out from the water without a fish take.

The reason is in huchen diet. It eats other fish, which are small enough to swallow. Huchen eat once in a couple of days and when he is full, he rearly takes flies, but when it hunts is no problem to catch it. In Slovenia we call this fish the king of fresh water, becouse he is on the top of the food chain.

This fish grow over one meter in lenght and weight over 20 kg.

Actually my best friend is the only person in SLO, that has caught two Huchen ower 20kg (you can see pictures in www.slo-guide.com-photo gallery- fish- huchen

I have caught this fish in trophy part of Sava Bohinjka part of fishing club Bled. This season this was my third fishing day and I caught huchen 103 cm and aproximate 10- 11 kg in weight. This is my biggest ever and caught with fly rod, with barbless hook.

Fish was released offcourse. Many people say that huchen are not such a strong fish, but the one I caught first run like a train and I was scared that will escape into another pool- that would be the end of it. This fish have a really hard mouth, so you need to set the hook twice if you really want to hook it with softer rods (8#, 9#)

I use 10 weight fly rod and flies tied on jig hooks. Hooks are from 5- 30g jigs and I use them conserning the depth of the pool Im fishing in. In our river is a lot of small fish Goby and Huchen eat them like candy. We try to mimic Gobys movement thru the river bottom with jig flies. Sometimes huchen stand on the end of the pool and wait for any weekened fish pasing by- especially in this time of year when some fish species are spawning. In times like this we use light streamers and intermediate clear line. but we need to be carefull, becouse if you are seen by the fish its all over.

Huchen fishing is more or less lotery conserning trout fly fishing, but we (guides) know some conditions like, water level, moon phase, temperature,....that will encrease % for a succesfull catch.

If somebody is interested in guiding can find some more informations on my website:
www.slo-guide-com

I hope you have enough material for your blog.

Best regards,

Jure

Hey Jure,

Thanks for sharing this great post and congratulations for this river king again. Seems like u already had ur christmas present already this year. Hope we can fish some days within the next season.

cheers and petriheil

Michael







@Santa Claus: put such a thing on the very top of my wish list, too. Please!