Last Friday I went on a road trip to a tributary of the Ruhr river with some palls.
I had fished this river only on two earlier occasions at upstream sections.
When we arrived at the river the first thing we noticed where the large puddles
of water on one of the field roads leading to the water.
It obviously had rained pretty hard quite recently.

Once in the water it showed, visibility low and a strong current pushing along.
The part to fish was the adjacent bank but I went only half way as I did not
know the pitfalls of this river and the current was to strong in my book.
I did some blind casting tossing perdigons and squirmy’s at likeable fish
hideouts but did not got any bites.

There was one place where I noticed a fish, it was a big fish.
That fish made such a racket that I thought it was a Asp but my palls told
me it was resident big trout.
A rather smart one because whatever I tossed near be it streamer, squirmy or
large mayfly it would not fall for it.

The fast current and the lack of success made us relocate to an even wider
section of the river.
My palls had some success with French nymphing but I was not on my a-game.
I tried a calmer shallow section hoping for chub but I only got a few small chub
plus some assorted minnows.

Later in the day the question arose to find an alternative spot but as conditions
where off I rather would stay at the wide section hoping to see some rising fish
sometime.
To my surprise the rising fish came, suddenly fish where popping up in front and
behind me that I had not seen all day.
I quickly tied on a sedge and soon had several good hits and lost a few good fish.

That fast current was something I was not used to so I had some trouble with
getting the line in quickly enough.
A few fish did stick though, trout and grayling.
Just as I thought the bite was really on cloud cover got thicker and the rise stopped.
I was recalled from the water as it was dinnertime so we visited a pizza shop
for a quick bite to eat.

We where back at the water maybe short of an hour to see if a evening rise had
commenced but after checking out two spot we figured it would not happen.
I voted for the option to call it a day due to the high water and the lack of action.
At least I had caught some fish and had a nice day exploring new water.
This was a spot to revisited when the conditions would be better.