Fly Fishing - Flyfishing Germany

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

We went for a short morning fishing session to our stream in Germany.
The rains of the last weeks had filled up the stream and left the waters a tad murky.
No signs of feeding fish where to be seen.

The stream.

There where however signs of drunken people, we saw one car with the mirror broken off, plants ripped out from the flowerbeds in the village and a lot of empty beer bottles at the bank of the stream.
The vandals where not to be seen, probably suffering from major hangover somewhere.

Roach nr. 1

My good spot was left untouched. I tied on a Copper John and probed the depths for fish. Normally the nymph would be intercepted almost immediately but today not much happened.
It took quite a while before I caught my first Roach.

Roach nr. 2

When fish nr. 2 came to the net I was thinking that maybe the zonker streamer would be a better tool to get something bigger to bite.
A few drifts along the snags at the bank resulted in a solid take of a trout but the fish came off.
Fearing I was fishing to high in the water table I decided to tie on a fast sinking leader.
The zonker was replaced by a polar minnow - perch pattern and the whole contraption was pulled through the water.

Yellow perch.

That dredging was not really fun so I tied on a Copper John again and fished right among the tree roots.
That was costly since I lost a few nymphs but it paid when I hooked into a solid fish that fought surprisingly hard.
Since the fish stayed so deep my first impression was that I had hooked a Brook trout.
When the fish came to the surface I was pretty surprised it was a brown trout, actually the first one from the stream this season.

Brown trout.

After the brown trout it was time to go and explore some other locations. Far upstream I fished one of the feeders, after a lot of shallow sections I finally came to a deep pool.

Shallow feeder stream.

As I was starting to cast the skies opened, the rain gear was left in the car way back at the village. Under the canopy of trees I stayed relatively dry so I carried on fishing. After some fiddling with the strike indicator I found the right depth to catch another Roach.

Roach.

When I once again got stuck in the trees I had to enter the pool to get the fly out the branches.
That act meant of course that the fish where gone.
Still I noticed that a little further upstream an undercut bank could probably yield some more fish.
I was proven right when a small Rainbow nailed the nymph almost instantly after I dropped it near the snags.

Rainbow trout.

It was about time to get back to the car so I headed downstream again.
Off course I was still fishing, this time with a small zonker.
I did not manage to hook more fish but that was not really necessary anymore, I was more than happy with the fish I had caught on this rainy day.