First trout on the trout bum
We made a visit to our German trout stream yesterday to see if we could catch some fish.
A week ago the river was flooding but after a few days of extremely hot weather the water
in the river had returned to it’s usual low level. It was 84 F with clear sunny skies down here.
Summer was in full progress and the first cornfields where being harvested. The sweetcorn almost reached to the sky.
Summer water levels
The last couple of weeks I was fishing with my new Orvis trout bum rod. I got it especially for our little trout river where overhanging trees and minimal casting space where common.
A 7ft 4 weight rod was the ideal choice for our stream. I had caught the local shiner species
Roach and Dace with it but still had to catch a trout with the Trout bum rod.
The barbarians of the worm brigade had pretty much cleared the river of trout in the past weeks so the chance of getting one where rather dim. I choose for a nymph fishing setup instead of a streamer so I could catch both shiners and trout. I instantly moved to the deepest pool in the river that used to be a producer of trout and shiners in the past. I had specially tied some pheasant tail nymphs with tungsten gold beads for this occasion. The deep pool yielded no fish so I fished the nymph in a river bend near an undercut bank. I had some takes of shiners but missed every time, those shiners where pretty fast in spitting out flies. At least the fish where present. Shiners never traveled alone so I continued to fish the river bend. Soon I had another fish on, it looked like a small brown trout. I could not check it out because the hook came out. Several casts followed until I had another contact.
Fish on
This time it was a trout that was solidly hooked. The fish went all over the place and made a nice jump at the end of the fight. It was a nice rainbow, I took a quick picture and returned it
to the stream. It felt well fighting the fish on this new light rod.
Rainbow trout.
So the Trout bum had finally seen its first trout. I was pretty sure that no more trout where present in the river bend or that any remaining trout would be fooled by a fly after the disturbance. The small shiners where still active with picking up flies from the surface so it was time to change setup. I fished small dry flies but somehow got no interest from the fish.
When I switch to an un-weighted Sawyer nymph I managed to get one little Dace.
Fishing was slow so it was time to seek out some new pools. Further upstream I tried again.
I was soon into a roach that hit the tungsten gold bead nymph when I fished close to a sunken tree. I even hooked another rainbow trout but that fish managed to throw the hook. It was already late in the evening when I was still trying to catch fish. One particular trout was rising under some tree branches where it was impossible to get a fly positioned. I tried to drift a nymph downstream but it did not work out.
When the bats where flying around my ears it was time to leave. There where a lot of insects on the water so late. Mayflies where still buzzing around the stream.
On the way back through the dark forest a small light on the ground took my interest. It was
A small larvae with a fluorescent green backend. I had never seen such a thing before.
I tried to take some pictures of it.
A common glow worm.
After some research it turned out that it was a common insect although I had never seen one before. Well we are still suspicious since a nuclear waste dump is about ten miles further off located. If we see three eyed rainbows next we will start to be worried.
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