Mountains somehow trigger the most positive feelings in me. And I am not even really sure what the reason is, probably a mixture of all the impressions and the physical exhaustion from hiking in steep terrain. It is easy to leave behind the stress and the worries of every day’s life.
The air is clean up in the mountains, but full of fragrances from herbs, rocks and the animals which graze the alpine pastures. Insects are humming, the water gurgling down the valley over rounded rocks. Few manmade sounds can be heard. Having the opportunity to fly fish in such an environment, is a blessing and one of the best things you can do in the mostly crowded, hectic world of Central Europe.
Recently, my friends Lucas and Nici invited me to Switzerland, and I had the chance to fish with them in the Bernese Alps. They know this region very well and wanted to show me some of their favorite waters.
Indeed, the fishing was a blast! You can’t expect very big fish in the mountains, but catching beautiful brown trout and brook trout on dry fly in these wild waters is an awesome experience. We fished for two days, and various sections of two different streams. We had to climb and crawl and sneek on all fours and then cast and try to follow the fly in the fast water. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Probably the biggest fish I hooked up to was a brown trout of close to 40cm (around 15 inch), but I wasn’t able to land it. The trout was hiding under a big rock in one of the last pools we fished on the first day, and I had no idea the fish was there. It was just a blind cast, hoping that something was there – my fly drifted by, the trout came out from under the rock, rose and took the fly in super-slow-motion. For one second the fish was on, but shook off the hook almost immediately. Both wonderful and frustrating, but that’s what makes fishing interesting!
Enough of words, here are some pictures from the trip.
