The “Halblech” is a small, rather unknown, mountain stream in Southern Bavaria, close to the famous castle of “Neuschwanstein”. Last week I had the opportunity to fish this stream during a family holiday in the area. Here is my report:
The license can be bought at the tourist information in the town of Buching. It is fairly cheap, and costs only 12€.
The stream itself has its source in the Ammer mountains and flows after mere 15km into the Lech River, which is a tributary to the Danube. The bed of mainly limestone gravel is relatively wide and shows that flow rate might vary quite a bit. Last week I estimated it to around 1.5 cubic metres per second, but during a flash flood it might well be 100 times more than that. This makes living for the fish not quite so easy, and I assume that there are not many large fish in that stream.
As with many other mountain streams, the pools are short and not very easy to fish. I used dark weighted nymphs #12 with success. There are also stonefly nymphs in the water, so take something larger with you as well.
The fish I caught were all brown trouts in perfect condition, but they were relatively small (max. 25cm). To me, the beautiful landscape and the cheap license easily make up for that. And I am sure there are some bigger surprises lurking somewhere in a deep pool… but although I saw one, I wasn’t able to persuade one of them.
