The weather was unusually warm and dry in the past few weeks, which resulted in exceptionally clear water… not as gin-clear as in a mountain stream, but much clearer than is common here. Rarely any pool was too deep to see the bottom, the visible depth probably something around three meters (~3 yards).
Usually our waters here in the Swabian Jura are a little milky, due to the high lime content: the water pours cold and clear from its source and has a lot of lime dissolved in it. As it flows on the surface, it warms and the water loses its potential to hold this much lime, which then precipitates in the water as a milky mist, sometimes covering stones and mosses. In some places, this lime has built up to form beautiful pools and cascades. But most of this lime just floats along and makes for the slight murkiness we have most of the time. Depending on the water temperature, the air temperature and the waterflow, the point where and the amount of the lime precipitation can vary and these days it has resulted in very clear water on our stretch of the stream.
The clear water looks gorgeous but the fish are more cautious in these conditions. If you walk slowly along the stream and you are lucky to spot a fish before it sees you, you have the rare chance to sightfish with nymphs, especially for the big grayling which live in these waters.
Grayling are truly hard to spot: sometimes it is only the tail over a light patch of ground or the whitish rim of the back fin which betrays their presence. More often you only see them as they flit away. Their gray-brown color blends extremely well with the color of the ground…
As usual, the big brown trout become difficult to catch with the approaching spawning, and with the clear water and the sun, they hid away somewhere deep in the weeds or under the banks of the stream. The small ones around 25 centimeters (10 inches) hooked up in great numbers, but I wasn’t able to catch another big one before trout season ended last Saturday. Now grayling will be open for another month, but I am already looking forward to meet my beloved browns again in April.
