Almost I had started this blog entry with the sentence that “everything turned out very differently than last year, and differently than I expected”… but then I realized that I had written this sentence several times before. Essentially, almost every year the fishing turns out differently than before. Change is the only constant in life was written already more than two thousand years ago, and this applies evenmoreso to flowing water.
So mayfly season was here very suddenly. Usually the first week of May is the best time, and sooner or later, the water surface is boiling with feeding fish. But this year, I haven’t witnessed such a mass hatch and the consequent feeding frenzy. There were plenty of mayflies nevertheless, don’t get me wrong… but just as the fish began rising, the whole show was over again. Usually it was just a single hour a day when conditions were best, and the time was shifting depending on temperature, clouds and wind, usually sometime in the late afternoon or early evening. I tried to be at the water as often as possible and managed to hit the best hour several times. Some big fish were landed, others lost in the fight, some fish proved too hard a nut to crack.
When a thunderstorm or a rain approached, things could change in an instant and suddenly, there were fish everywhere!
Those fish, which were the most challenging to catch, especially left their mark in my memory. And such a fish was the following:
Most of the mayfly-action had already passed, and I was slowly walking along the water when I suddenly spotted a large fish over a shallow, sandy bottom. It was swimming around with no clear direction, pausing under a submerged branch of a dead tree and then slowly continued upstream. I made several casts into the anticipated direction but the trout was ignoring my fly completely. As the water was slightly foggy and there were reflections on the water, I was not able to follow the fish with my eyes constantly, and suddenly it just disappeared. The fish just did not show up at the place I had expected. Where had this fish gone? I walked up and down the stream, but the fish was nowhere to be seen.
The next day, I visited this spot again, hoping to see this gorgeous trout again. The water was much clearer now, and I scanned every square inch with my eyes, to no success. On the opposite bank though, under an overhanging bush in relatively shallow water, I noticed a silent gurgling sound as a real mayfly drifted into the thicket. Was it possible, that the big trout hid in these branches? The spot did not look like the typical big-fish-spot. With questionsmarks in my brain I waited and watched. And as another mayfly difted past, I suddenly saw a big tail as a trout made a turn under that thicket. THERE IT WAS!
The spot was hard to cast, but these kind of challenges make fishing so addictive! I managed to deliver my fly just a little upstream of the bush, and watched as the trout came out and took the fly in complete calmness. I lifted my flyrod and the hook was set! …it was an incredibly satisfiying moment, when I finally had this fish in the net. What a beauty, what a take, what a challenge! It is these moments, which make mayfly season so special. For the rest of the year, such stories happen only rarely.
