The NZ Silver Flies is the national fly fishing team which is selected every year from the top qualifying anglers at the SFFNZ National Championships. The current team is representing New Zealand at the World Fly Fishing championships in Poland 2010 from June .

We will be keeping you up to date with regular reports of how the team is going.

The New Zealand team for the worlds of

• Paul Dewar Captain (from Levin)
• Des Armstrong (Palmerston North)
• Dan Comer (Rotorua)
• Tony Houpt (Wellington)
• Aaron West (Auckland)
• Peter Scott (Auckland) is off on Friday June 4th to Poland.

Unfortunately Poland has had bad floods over the last couple of weeks, some of which have been in the San River area where we the team is based. This has meant the organisers have already had to change one of the river sessions to a lake so we the competition will now have three river and two lake sessions.

Well, its now all over and we are into the post mortem and the story telling. The last day was very interesting with the team and
individual placing changing a lot.It was pouring down with rain by the time the first session stated and the river had started to colour up a bit.

Des was on the lake at the top end for this session and managed to get get 9 fish which was a good number (some how
the French man managed to get 20)

Peter was at the bottom of the lake was the hard end, he got two fish but one was foul hooked so only one counted which was quite good as there were quite a few blanks.Aaron got 4 fish on the river which put him in 7th for his group Dan got two and Tony one.

When I checked the overall results after this session at
lunch time I was very surprised to see Des was 1st overall
all for the individual results on 20 points from two on 21
and three others on 22 points.

The NZ team was still placed in 10th position so we had not moved, the Poles were leading from France and the Czech's

I went to see Des at the lake as he had the bottom section
for the afternoon and decided not to tell him about him
leading as he had enough to deal with on this tough end of
the lake.

Aaron was on the top section and feeling quite confident, he did the business and came in with 7 fish to place high in the group, Des found it tough and dropped a few fish and managed to land one to place well down.

By now the rivers were chocolate brown but some sections
had a reasonably clean bit in the middle or on the far side. Peter had one of these and he used it well to land 3 fish but this meant wading back across 100 plus meters or dirty high river to the controller each time, he went for a swim on one occasion (which I managed to get a picture of) but held onto the fish. His 3 fish placed him 8th. Dan got 2 fish from his beat which also got him 8th as there were a lot of blanks on his session. Tony also got 2 fish on a very dirty section of the river.

When the results came out we had moved up to be placed 8th overall, Des unfortunately had dropped to 14th, one more fish on the lake would have put him up about 8 places. Aaron finished in 29th place.

The Czech's had moved up to win from France, Slovakia and Poland in 4th. Pavel Chyba(Czech) was first individual, Adam Tomas (Chech) 2nd and John Horsey (Eng) 3rd. Other results were Australia 9th, England 11th and USA 15th

Off to the closing ceremony today and then to Wales for the Commonwealth Champs.

Well its 6.30am on the last day and the rain is coming down
hard. We have two sessions today for all our guys and its
make or break time.

Yesterday was tough with both Dan & Peter blanking on the
lake, the river guys did better with Des getting 3 fish on
this beat including a great 49cm Grayling to place 4th. This result put him into 3rd place individuall (being 1st equal
but 3rd on countback, what a great effort.

Tony got 5 fish to place 12th and Aaron 4 for 12th.

At the end of the day we were in 10th place on countback
with the Aussies up to 8th. Poland lead from Slovarkia,
France and South Africa with the Czechs in 5th.

Hope it clears a little, let you know tomorrow how we finish

Hi Everyone
First day over and a lot of surprising results. We ended up 11th after the first session (out of 26 teams) Aaron got 2 fish on the tough section of the lake to get 8th in his group (27 anglers per group). Des got 9 fish on his river section to be 8th. The surprising thing was a blank on the river by the NZ world champ Martin Droz from the Czech team.

The afternoon session was a bit better with fish rising on the river and a few more caught on the top lake beat. Dan got 9 fish here to be 9th where one fish on the bottom section got Tony a 12th place Des got a great tally of 6 fish on his river section to be 3rd in this group.

After the section session NZ was 8th with France first, Poland 2nd and Czech 3rd. Des was lying in 11th place (out of 129)
Other results of note were Australia 12th and England
(current world champs ) 13th.

Well the practise is over and we are just back from the official welcome ceremony and off to the opening dinner. The weather here has been a bit cooler (about 20deg) and drizzle, the river is now running a lot lower and clean as they have stopped the power station to maintain a good level (wish we could do that at home).

Official practise was quite hectic with up to 50 anglers on one section pushing for places to fish, reminded me of the bridge pool middle of a winter run. This meant the fishing was hard and we didn't get of lot of fish or any great practise on the grayling but did learn a couple of things from watching some of the European teams.

Tomorrow the competition starts and we have the draw tonight
to decide who goes where so I will try to put in a report every day on how we are going, tough to do as only two internet computer's here and 200 plus wanting to use them.

The weather over here is nice and warm, been over 30 deg for last two days and same today. We have still not been able to fish the main San river as it is still high and dirty. It is dropping now so we expect to get on it it tomorrow.

We fished a couple of the tributary's over the last two days and got a few grayling but bugger else as our catch was mainly white fish (chubb and dace).

We went to the lake and fished the practice section yesterday and had to row boats, a bit if a laugh especially when you see a guy like Aaron rowing around a big boy like Dan. We caught nothing for 4 hours so were a bit dejected until we found out the English had not caught anything either and the French had only caught a couple of pike and a perch

A day off today to get gear ready and a hopefully an assault
on a cleaner river for the next few days.

Well we finally all made it to Poland though had lots of dramas
getting here. Peter Scott got pulled off the plane by the
police in a case of mistaken ID. (See article in New Zealand Herald). By the time it was sorted it cost a lot in airfares and an extra day of travel.

The weather here is great so far but the area has been
wrecked by floods; lots of bridges washed away and roads
closed. We got our first look at the San river today. It was high (up .8 meters) and very dirty. It looked a bit like the Manawatu (the same colour).

We went and had a fish on some of tributaries and although these were also high and dirty but we got a few fish. Des Armstrong and Aaron West got a grayling each but the rest of us caught browns or white fish. Hopefully we find somewhere clean to fish tomorrow.