Fly Fishing

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

I went fishing with HansF last Saturday to one of our local streams.
Hans was using an 8 weight rod to pursue pike while I was armed
with my trouting outfit to target perch or pike.
It was a sunny day and a fair number of rising fish made me switch to dry flies. Luckily the trouting outfit enabled me to fish dryflies, nymphs or streamers whenever it was called for.

One of the good spots.

I had some fantastic takes of shiners on the dry fly but missed all but one little Dace.
The first stretch of the stream yielded no Pike for Hans so we moved on downstream to a watermill where quite a few of Pike had been caught in the past.
At the new stretch hordes of shiners could be seen in the almost
empty bypass around the watermill.
The fish where extremely wary due to low water levels, I could not manage to catch any fish there.
At the deeper junction of the bypass with the main stream I saw fish scooting away when a bird flew over the water.
After the situation calmed down I repeatedly launched a small dry in the main stream until a nice sized Dace grabbed the fly.
Sometime later a goldbead pheasant tail brought a nice Roach to the surface.

Roach on the pheasant tail.

I saw Hans in the distance bowing over to the stream most likely landing a fish.
After a few minutes I heard Hans shouting he had a fish on.
As I approached him he hauled in a nice pike.
It was his second fish in succsession.

Hans with Pike nr. 2

Sunday it was time for another trip to Germany where I fished with Joop in the upper reaches of our stream.
It was a day of rain, sunshine and everything in between with comfortable temperatures.
Fall had progressed quite a bit since our last visit, the river was already boasting a lot of fallen leaves.
On the surrounding fields I saw large flocks of Lapwings ready to migrate to the south to escape the upcoming winter.

Signs of fall.

Due to the lack of rainfall the water level of the river was low making fish extra wary.
We waded downstream and found some new deep pools that contained fish.
We did not encounter any trout although that part of the river surely held some specimens.

Low water.

The newly discovered pools where deep enough to hold several fish.
I managed to catch about 8 Roach in various sizes and a couple of little bottom feeding Gudgeons.
The riverbed ranged from sand/mud bottoms to a shingle riverbed (sort of limestone).
Although there where signs of people fishing at these places path where quite overgrown So fishing pressure had to be not that great.

Big Roach for such a small stream.

Another one on the ever effective pheasant tail nymph.

The sweetcorn was still on the fields but surely would be harvested any day now.
We heard repeatedly shots fire indicating that the hunters where busy pursuing their pastime.
Joop mentioned buying some orange clothing just in case but I told him that the fishing season would be closed down soon anyway.

When we where on our way home we decided to take a look at the watermill to see if any trout had survived the fisher king massacre from last week.
Fishing in the pool below the mill was now allowed for members if they would purchase a special day ticket.
Some of the youth members of the German club where
fishing and they did manage to catch some of the remaining trout.
I am still trying to convince Joop to go fishing next Saturday so we can end the season in Germany with at least a few trout.

So this is probably my last fishing report from Germany this year.
Next week around this time I will be in Naples FL and will hopefully catch some
nice and hopefully bigger fish from the Gulf of Mexico.
I am pretty sure that the people at Everglades Angler in Naples will allow me to
use their computers at the shop to file some reports. TL