Mike Komara competes in the 2017 Youth World Fly Fishing Championship in Slovenia.
You can imagine the tension, growing into anticipation and finally bursting into excitement. Or maybe you can’t.
Have you ever medaled in an Olympic-like competition?
Mike Komara and the rest of the U.S. Youth Fly Fishing Team did.
Mike Komara lands a fish in Slovenia.
This summer, competing against teams from all over the world, Team USA took third place and captured the bronze medal at the 2017 World Youth Fly Fishing Championship in Slovenia. They finished only behind squads from France and Poland, in that order.
It’s something Komara, a senior at North Allegheny High School, will never forget.
“The most memorable aspect of the trip was getting back from the last session and talking with all my teammates, realizing that we had all done well in the final session and that we may have pulled out of fifth and made the medal stand,” Komara said.
“And then the cheering and excitement when we were told that we had in fact medaled.”
Komara played a big part in the team’s success, finishing 13th out of 68 competitors.
In the last session of the day he came in first out of all competitors, said his mother, Katy.
Still, he was humble.
“He wants people to know that it was totally a team effort and it wasn’t just his win in the last session that helped the team get a bronze, it was the combined efforts of him and his teammates every day-communicating with each other and coming up with strategies to get to the medal stand,” said his mother.
Only one other member of Team USA placed higher. Grant Hawse of Marvin, N.C., finished seventh.
Teams from France and Poland took gold and silver in the 2017 international youth fly fishing competition.
Competitors fished “beats” or sections of streams, lakes and ponds – at assigned times. On occasion, they were casting for brown and rainbow trout.
At other times, depending on their beat, they fished for grayling, chubs, nace and barbel, a sucker-like species. Only fish that met minimum sizes – chubs, for example, has to go almost 12 inches – counted.
That presented some real challenges, Komara said.
“The trout were fairly straightforward to catch. If they were there and you put a solid presentation in front of them they would eat it,” he said. “Grayling were the same way though slightly more opportunistic, and they were heavily keyed into dry flies.”
The other fish, though, were tough.
He called chubs the competition’s “wild card.” They would chase streamers and eat nymphs, but were extremely spooky and seemed to hit without rhyme or reason.
“I caught some in every session, but I didn’t feel that I could rely on focusing on them to bring high numbers,” he said.
The barbel were big, averaging around 20 inches, while the nace were often in schools numbering in the thousands. Komara said. But they proved difficult to catch consistently.
“We had limited success on them in practice and couldn’t really figure them out. Once in a while one would eat a drab nymph drifted past their face, but this was terrible considering that you could watch your fly drift past hundreds of fish over a few hours to catch one or two,” he added.
European competitors with more experience with such species did better on them, he noted.
The Americans caught most of their fish on heavy flies – with tungsten beads and lead wrap – so as to get down to fish in heavy current. No external weights were allowed.
Komara most enjoyed the fishing that was unlike what he’s experienced in the States.
He made the most of his home-grown knowledge, though. When it came time for his last session of the competition, he got a good section of river, said Katy Komara. He made it count, too, getting eight trout in 20 minutes.
“The person judging him said he would only get two or three out of this one hole. He caught the first eight in that section, then he fished all the rest of the water, saving that same spot for two more trips back to it, to catch all but two of his 16 fish,” she said.
“The judge was shocked and people were coming by watching him pull one after another from that little spot. It was exciting to watch. Mike was in his glory!”
It’s certainly something he’ll always remember, for a lot of reasons.
“The entire experience was special, so it would be hard to pick any one thing. if I had to, it would be the way we worked together and the bond we formed as a team over the competition,” Komara said.
Fly fishing championship competition details
Want to learn more about how the U.S. Youth Fly Fishing Team did at the fly fishing championship? Full competition results are available by clicking here.
Details on the U.S. team, meanwhile, are available here.
Team USA on the medal stand.
