Yesterday I was busy with my flyfishingbuddy at the local unverisity to give a flyfishing demo at the annual open house day at the campus. Just for demo purposes we fished in an ornamental pond for stocked rainbow trout. Today it was time to head back to our own little stream in Germany.

I fished with Michael this day and we decided to fish a stretch of the river at the outskirts of a small village. Micheal went downstream to the river that had a bycicle path along the banks. I chose solitude and headed out on the stretch in the jungle. I dogded the farmyard dog and the horses in the meadow and fished the first couple of pools without any luck.

It was not long before I saw something strange. Six large gray fish where moving upstream in front of me. They where not trout because those do not travel in groups. The fish had not seen me so I had a shot at them to see what they where.


Unindentified fish in the stream

I casted a very small goldbead nymph a couple of times past the fish. When I saw one fish out of the group making an arkward movement I struck. The fish was on and it was a rather substantial specimen.
When the fish came closer I saw that it was an European bream (Abramis brama). Bream are poor fighters but at least the ones living in flowing water put up some sort of resistance and use their broad sides to their advantage.


My ever first Bream on the fly

There where no signs of feeding trout so I continued to fish with a small goldbead nymph and caught about a dozen of shiners. Both Roach and Dace where among the shiner species.


Roach

I waded upstream to a spot where my fishingbuddy Joop thought he had seen a chub. Chubs are large shiners that will hit a range of flies. They fight well so hooking one was high on my to do list. When I arrived at the location where we sighted the fish I noticed that they where still down there. But with the clearer water I could see what they really where.
No chubs but carps. Six of them stacked in a very shallow feeder stream. I kicked them out of the feeder and told them next time to take goldbead nymphs Maybe they would listen.


The Carp

In the afternoon I was still busy fishing for small shiners. A loud splash in a deep pool got my interest very quickly. A fish was activily rising to something. I could see the fish hovering in the surface. The water was a little stained so I could not clearly indentify which species of fish it was. My first guess was a nice size Roach. I took some time before the fish tried to nail my cdc moquito imitation. I got a strike but missed the fish. I moved upstream to wait for the scene to calm down and try again. After a while the fish started feeding again. I went back and started to cast. After 5 minutes I finally had the fish on. I noticed instantly that this fish fought in a different way than a Roach usually did. The resistance was more like what a Trout would put up. It turned out to be one.
So at the end I still got my Trout. I had caught four different fish species on the fly today and could add one new fish species to my fly caught list.
It was a good day.


At last, a trout on the dry fly

Hey Marcel that bream looks like a fish that we have down here in the saltwater. The fish I am thinking of is called a Mohara. hay have almost the same body shape, but our fish have some barring down their sides. I don't ever remember catching one on hook and line, but have caught plenty in the cast net

I have caught one on Naples pier. It was quite big, I gave it to one of the locals who wanted it for dinner. I did take a picture, look for the similarities below.

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i never thought of them as good to eat. i've seen big schools of good size ones while diving in gordon pass.
http://shrimpin.com/bait_fish_identification.htm has some good info on bait fish but not on eatibility

Hey Jim-email some info to the shop so I have it if someone is interested in this. If you see headrush999 online give him a shout, he is in to stuff like that for sure. He and I went out into the 'blocks' the other day and man did we see some big freshwater snook-they don't get big by being stupid though...