The end of October has arrived, and with it the MLS League final on Lake Bełdany. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take part in the September event on Lake Tałty, and our teammates were a bit short on experience, so we lost our chance to win the league. They did decently (13th place twice), but it wasn’t enough to stay in the fight for the top spot. Our chances for the podium were still alive though, so we decided to keep pushing at the last event.
Day one went very well and according to plan. We quickly filled the perch card (average close to 30 cm) while looking for pike. The stripies were feeding hard, so the card was done in 15 minutes. We went back to pike and that’s where the trouble started – we couldn’t see them on Live at all. So we decided to fish the reeds. It took longer than planned – almost two hours – before we put two 61s and one 66 cm in the card.
With the pike and perch cards done, the plan was simple: head back to Live and hunt for bigger pike and zander. We finally found some and tempted two good fish (91 and 104 cm), and lost two others no smaller. We also saw a few zander, but they ignored our baits.
That was enough for first place on the day. Surprisingly, it let us jump straight from 6th in the league to 3rd. A quick calculation showed there was no realistic path higher, so the plan for day two was to defend the podium.
Day two started better than expected – with a 75 cm pike. Unfortunately, things got tricky after that. The water felt empty, with zero pike marks. We ran back to the weeds, but it was slow too – just one short pike. The only sensible call – switch to perch. They didn’t disappoint and we quickly filled the card with five fish averaging 30 cm.
Back to pike – first the open water, which turned out empty. Then weeds again: just one bite and a bitten-off tail. Back to open water and, 90 minutes before the end, we landed a pike worth 96 points. We finally found fish, but a few wouldn’t commit despite charging the lure nicely. Suddenly the pike vanished and zander showed up. They totally ignored us, and we couldn’t complete the pike card that day.
Even so, we finished a very solid 4th on day two, which kept us 3rd overall.
To sum up, we’re really happy to have secured a podium. The fish were active. The vibe was great. I felt that despite the bad weather, everyone was in good spirits and had fun.
I think the scoring format was a brilliant idea from the organizers: separate pike, perch, and zander cards that reward versatility; points bonuses that pushed teams to close cards and look for solutions beyond monotonous Live-staring like fishing the meadows. Fantastic.
And of course, congrats to the top two teams – their consistency dominated the league. Huge applause!
