Fly Fishing

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

Today I came to the conclusion that summer was nearing its end.
The forest floor was increasingly inhabited by mushrooms and trees
where showing signs of shedding leaves.

Mushrooms in the forest.

The corn fields where harvested and it would not take long before
the sweetcorn would be gone also.
Early mornings would start with mist and lower temperatures.
Fall was coming close.

After a week of rain and low temperatures the sun finally decided to show its
face on this sunday.
Early morning I was picked up by fishing buddy Joop and we headed into
Germany for a days fishing.
After a short visit to the bakery we started fishing one of our favorite pools.
We secretly hoped that some fish had flushed out from the no-fishing zone during the past days of high water.

Fishing our favorite deep pool.

I had the honor to make the first cast and fished a streamer upstream through the pool.
A fish immediately attacked the streamer and it was fish on, a little but beautifully colored
brown trout came to the net.
We tried to localize other trout but had no luck, time to move.

Little brown trout.

During the last period of high water we had explored some of the feeder streams of
our main river.
These feeder streams or ditches where so darn small that we would
have never considered them fishing waters but since our last explorations we knew
better.
On this day we returned and found that there where still fish hiding out in the
deep pools .
Our main river began its life at the junction of two of these
feeder streams.
First we decided to fish the smallest of the two feeder streams.

Fishing in the jungle.

It was not more than a ditch but at the first deeper pool I had a hit on the first cast.
After loosing several nymphs to dead trees on the bottom I nailed a Roach on the
pheasant tail nymph.

Small Roach on the pheasant tail nymph.

Joop also hauled in a Roach.
We had quite a few hits but the stretch we fished was rather short so we soon had scared any fish that was left in the stream.
Upstream the stretch was closed for fishing but even farther upstream we could fish again.
So upstream it was, problem was that the banks where so overgrown with thorny shrubs that we could not get access to the water.
We tried to wade for a while but there just where not any deep pools upstream.
Time to move on to feeder nr.2
Feeder stream nr.2 had more flow than nr. 1 and had yielded good results during our last visit.
Joop was immediately into a fish when he started fishing at a bend in the stream.

German nature preserve sign.

I left Joop to his pool and sneaked away to a good spot further upstream.
Although the stream was very shallow some places where surprisingly deep, so deep that I
did not dared to wade trough them at the last visit.
Water levels had dropped though so I confidently fished one of these deep pools.
At the first cast my nymph was immediately intercepted by a shiner and after a few missed strikes I hauled in another Roach.
I was soon joined by Joop who also caught a Roach in the same pool.
It was almost time to go home but we still wanted to scout the upper reaches of this stream.
Joops boots where his downfall when he slipped along the edge of the deep pool,
He got wet feet while I was laughing my pants off wading trough the pool.
Joop had done that on more than one occasion so he continued fishing.

Upper reaches of stream nr.2

The stream became shallower and deeper pools became scarce. Suddenly I saw rings on the
surface in front of me.
A fish was feeding quite aggressively on the surface and that
could only mean trout.
I launched the pheasant tail upstream and saw that the strike indicator
was pulled down.
It turned out to be a trout just as I thought, just a pity that it was only 4 inches.
It was already late so I did not had the change to explore the full length of the stream.
Maybe there would still be big trout hiding somewhere out there, we would get them next time.

We still have one month of trout fishing ahead of us before the season closes at the end of
September. Maybe we can still reach Trout Bum status by that time Smile

RickW · Location: Syracuse, NY

Nice photo essay Marcel

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

We'll, to be honest not so nice. This time I relied to much on the camera's auto setting which left all pics underexposed. I should have put to camera in semi-manual mode with an higher iso value. Although it was a bright day the canopy of trees above or stream always keeps out the light.
In the end I had to adjust the pictures with software, the pictures are not sharp enough and the colors are not correct.

I also messed up with the mushroom picture since the mushrooms are out of focus. In manual mode I could have picked the focus point by hand.
I am just getting to lazy with this manual mode, next time it will be semi-manual again....