I have just finished a beautiful and productive fishing day in Germany.
Fellow club member Joop picked me up at 7.30, half an hour later we where tackling up at the river bank.
The morning air felt chilly and the promised sun was nowhere to be seen.

Checking out the good spots,

The mayflies that where so abundant a few days ago where not to be seen.
So instead of tying on a klinkhamer dry I decided to fish a grey gold bead nymph.
After a few casts a nice brown trout took the nymph instantly as hit the water.

Nice brown.

The ice had been broken so the say.
When a fish rose in front of me I thought it would be easy game but the fish was not fooled by the nymph.
A drift along some brushes in the water resulted in a dace.

Dace

Joop managed to hook a big brown by letting his nymph rig float near an undercut bank.
I tried the usual haunts of past seasons but found that they where void of trout or at least it seemed that way.
With no more hits and no rising fish it was time to move to another stretch.
The second stretch of the river was not a piece of water I was fond of.
The water was slow moving due to a watermill in front and from a pasture cows would sometimes enter the water.
For some strange reason though that muddy part was always pretty well stocked.
Joop was first in business when a rising trout gave away its cover.
Only after several casts the fish would finally surface and take the dry.
In the mean time I tried a stretch a little further upstream where a feeder enter the main stream.

The good spot.

I had changed to a black streamer to probe the waters for fish.
At the first cast a big swirl behind the streamer showed me someone was home.
Now the fish had not felt the hook so on the next cast it would probably chase the fly again.
Second cast was an instant hit, a small brown had taken the streamer.

Joop had some appointments in the afternoon so he had to go back.
I had plenty of time however and asked Joop to drop me off near the river in the next town.
Joop dropped me off in the town and walked with me to the river only to see rising fish and loads of mayflies.
I saw a trout rise and launched a klinkhamer close to the fish, the trout was not fooled though.
Several casts with the dry yielded no response so I tied on a small gold-bead pheasant tail nymph.
As the nymph drifted close the last sighting of the trout I saw a silvery flank moving, the trout had hit the nymph instantly.
Almost at my feet another trout was rising very close to some overhanging shrubs.
The fish would not take the nymph so I tied on a big white klinkhamer.
That was more to the trout’s liking as it exploded on top of the fly.

Trout nr. 4 of the day.

Later in the afternoon the action died down a bit, I could not locate any more rising trout.
Something else was feeding though and I guessed it would be either Roach or Dace.
To my surprise even the Roach where tuned in to the mayflies because they took the large klinkhamer with no hesitation.

Roach.

After catching the Roach I called it a day and headed for the station that was located far out of the town I was fishing in.
The path to the station happened to run along the river and when I saw rising fish I just had to stop and make a cast.
I missed one fish but the second one was firmly hooked, a Dace again on the klinkhamer.

Dace caught, train missed

I missed the train home but did not mind, getting that last fish was more worthwhile than being on the train anyway.
Maybe I could apply for trout bum status one of these days.