At the start of the August I flew with my girlfriend to the
Central Europe for one weeks summer holiday. We started our trip from Budapest
and travelled from there by train to the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava.
I set my phone to alarm at 4.15 of our second
morning at Bratislava. After a quick breakfast I left from our apartment and
headed to the Danube river. When I got to the shore I realized the current of
the river was way too fast to fish from the bottom with my light gear. So I
decided to try if I could find any new species between the rocks at the shore
line. The only bait I had was a can of sweetcorn I had bought from the supermarket
the day before. Well, sweetcorn is useless when playing with small hooks and
hunting for gobies, bullheads etc. So I started to turn around the rocks and
finally managed to find some small worms to use as a bait. After that it didn’t
take too long to catch my first Danubian fish and it was also my first fish
from the Slovakian waters. There is several different species of gobies at the
Danube river and of course I caught the only one I had caught before. The Round
goby has conquered also the Europe’s second longest river. Soon I caught
another Round goby.
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| Round goby (Neogobius melanostomus). Bratislava castle on the background. |
At one point I was bouncing my mormuska outside of the big
rocks at the shore. Suddenly something much bigger dashed from the depths of
the river and hit my bait. Luckily the fish did not make any sudden moves and
after a quick fight I landed a Chub of almost one kilo. Not a bad fish with two
meter long whip rod and a 0,14mm line! After that I had to leave back to our
apartment because we had a bus to catch. Our next destination was another
capital and after a one hours bus ride we reached Vienna, Austria.
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| The Europen chub. |
Sadly I had not time to fish at Vienna because
we spend only one night there. Next day we travelled back to Budapest by bus,
rented a car and headed to the biggest lake of the Central Europe, Lake Balaton.
When we finally got to the south end of the lake I had a strange feeling at my
right ankle. It was aching and swollen. When we looked it more closely we found
two small holes from it. A snake bite! Now I remembered that I had felt some
twinge and found out my ankle was bleeding when I was fishing at Bratislava.
Well, we managed to find a local doctor who prescribed some antibiotics for me.
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| Was it one of these that bite me? |
That small episode pretty much ruined my plans
to go fishing to the lake Balaton or some of the canals and small rivers
flowing to it. Well maybe next time. Instead we went to have some bath time to
the town of Heviz. There’s a spa which is build by and on a thermal lake. The
lake has a good population of fish too. I managed to catch couple of Western
mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) with my bare hands but as you know I’m only
counting the species I’ve caught with a hook and line.
Couple of nights later my ankle felt much
better (by the time we had returned back to Budapest) and my alarm clock was
ringing again at 4.15 am. It was time to fish at the Danube river again. I
chose to fish right under the Margit bridge right in the center of Budapest. I
set up my bottom rig ready for a later use but started to find out if there was
any life between the shore rocks. And I got an answer right away when a fish
hit my mormuska from the second hole I tried. This was it. It was a goby of
some kind but definitely NOT a Round goby. When I carried on I managed to catch
two more of this new kind of gobies and of course few Round gobies too.
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| The scenery from my Budapest swim. |
I also tried to fish with my bottom rig but it
felt almost like a waste of time. When I used a sweetcorn as a bait I couldn’t
get any bites and when I used a worm the rig barely hit the bottom before there
was a Round goby hanging around at my hook.
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| These guys were everywhere..... |
Afterwards I got a confirmation from Dr. Akos
Harka from the Hungarian Ichthyological Society that all the three new gobies were
Big head gobies (Ponticola kessleri) which is native species in the Danube
river system. Big head goby was my species number 132. You can find my all time species list from here.
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| Big head goby (Ponticola kessleri). |
Well, this was not a super species hunting
fishing trip (and it was not supposed to be in the first place) but at least I
caught one new species. The Danube river has a huge potential as a species
hunting region and I’m pretty sure I will be back there some day.
