On the second day of my Harz trip we had a full angling day before us.
Since almost the whole fly-fishing club had joined this trip my usual routine was hindered by some logistical problems.
Breakfast in the hotel was served only until 9 o’clock so the best time to go fishing was already past by then.
The only way to get maximum fishing time was to get out early in the morning and head for the river to fish for a couple of hours before breakfast.
Early morning on the river.
The stretch in front of the hotel held some fish but wading there was a bit tricky.
The large stones and strong current in that part where the ideal combination to go for a swim if you where not to careful.
So when I waded down the river it was in a slow pace.
I fished the deeper pockets and riffles with the bead head pheasant tail and managed to catch a few brown trout.
As strike indicator I used orange strike putty from Loon, it was easy to use and adjusting the depth of the nymph was easy to do.
Most of the time I just put a large blob on the leader so I could track the nymph even in the fast flowing stretches of the river.
Brown trout.
After breakfast we went fishing in full earnest, since we had visited this river more than once we knew exactly where to go next.
Pretty landscape.
For a change I fished another pattern than the usual gold bead pheasant tail nymph.
A Czech mate nymph, dubbed sparkle/orange would be the next pattern to try.
This pattern was tied on a shrimp/scud hook and fairly heavy, ideal for this river.
As expected the pattern had a positive effect on the brown trout.
Brown trout.
Beautiful surrounding.
Later in the day the large mayflies appeared in numbers and the trout went mad, they would pick up the mayflies in free flight if they hovered to close to the surface.
It was time for me to finally use the extended body mayflies I had bought some time ago to use in these conditions.
A rising fish under the bank was my next target and after a few casts the fish could not resist the tempting mayfly passing over its head.
Mayfly time.
In the afternoon it was time to get dinner so we could fish well into the evening hours again in the hope to see loads of rising fish.
We picked out the same slow flowing stretch of the river as the day before and waited with anticipation of the thing to come.
Fish started rising in force but somehow our dry fly patterns where completely ignored.
When very small brown mayflies where emerging on my waders it was obvious why.
The bad thing was that I did not have any brown CDC flies with me that would match the hatch.
Even a pheasant tail nymph was completely ignored as fish where rising all over the place.
Under the banks some fish where rising steady so my last option I could come up with was to fish a mayfly under the bank.
That last tactic yielded one fish only.
Brown trout on the mayfly.
The trout where picky on this evening and we did not have the right patterns with us to catch them.
At least we knew what to bring with us fly wise on the next trip to this river.
When the last light disappeared we went back to the hotel to join the other guys of the club and discuss the events of the day.
It was a good day to be in the mountains.
Flyfishing Germany - Harz region June 15th
nice set of pics
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