April 27th 2022 … a public holiday in the Netherlands as the king had his birthday.
I decided to hop over the border as I was more interested in catching fish than join the party crowds back home. The Germans had a normal working day so no crowds at the water.

The last couple of weeks the whole fishing thing did not really work out as I wanted.
I had not caught a single decent trout since the season start on March 15th.
The mission for the day was to catch a decent trout.

With a cold night there was no necessity to go early.
I was at the water at 09:00 and still had the place all for my self.
But… no fish … oddly I tried all the spots and riffles and no bites at all.
At a deadfall I finally hooked a little brown trout.

I worked my way upstream and only got a few small bottom feeders (gudgeons) and one single roach.
I moved a few miles further upstream and tried some of the deeper holes.
At one of them I launched a squirmy at the start of the pool and the indicator went down with force.
Finally a good fish and not a brown as I had expected but a feisty rainbow trout.

My day was made but just for good order I tried some more spots upstream.
The water was lifeless although I had spotted the first occurrence of a Danica mayfly (Ephemera danica). When I finally spotted a fish in the surface I wondered if it would be a trout.
I still had the squirmy tied on and dropped it near the fish but no reaction.
In hindsight a dry fly might have been a better choice but it was done.

Next I dropped the squirmy at the start of the pool and had a lot of bites.
The bites came not from trout but from Rudd aka Golden shiners.
Those where not usual stream fare but I suspected they came from the clubs pond where
the surplus population of shiners where sometimes relocated to the stream.
With their upturned mouth the Rudd where keen on surface food and probably cruised
in the surface for midges or stuff that came down from the trees.

I tried one final spot for a brown trout but no action was to be had there.
It was late afternoon so what better way to end the day than have dinner at the pub.
Off course the new location was at the other stream so I took some interesting backroads to get there.
The pub had a good crowd out on the terrace.
I soon traded my outside spot for inside as the temperature plummeted rapidly with the sun low in the sky. There where some supply chain problems but I did not leave the place hungry.