Yesterday I returned to the Kyll after almost 15 years. The main reason for the trip was I found out my German state license expired two years ago and needed to get it renewed if I wanted to plan a fishing trip in Germany.
Without this state license one can't acquire a license of the river one would like to fish in Germany. So I planned a day to drive to Gerolstein as I knew I would get a five year state license for sure. The river Kyll runs through this town.
For most, if not all, Dutch fly fishermen back then, the first steps with fishing for trout in the rivers started in the German Eifel area. This volcanic plateau has several well known rivers like the Kyll and the Ahr. My first trout fishing started at the river Kyll in the early 1990s and have fished several stretches of this river over the best part of ten years.
Eventually as fly fishing got popular, the river got more and more crowded and ensuring the license(s) for the river on short term was getting increasingly difficult. Also the large numbers of graylings that once populated these rivers were slowly but clearly diminishing.
From what I heard the river had to deal with regular release of pollution along the years. What really devastated the grayling population was the increasing number of cormorants. Being protected by law these birds could feed on the easy to catch graylings without any restrictions.
As I wanted to make sure I don't run into a closed counter at the municipality, I aimed for arriving around 10 am. I decided to fish for a few hours at most as I wanted to be back home no later than 9 PM as it takes almost a 4 hour drive. The weather prediction the day before I left looked okay with overcast and slightly lower temperature after a hot and sunny period. Half way on my way I checked the weather again and all the sudden it looked pretty awful! The Kyll is known for getting murky really fast after rain....
As I left the town hall with the renewed state license the rain soon started to slow down into trickles. I dropped by at the hardware store to get the river license. I took a quick glance at the river and although the rain did color the water a bit I could still see the bottom. Once arriving at the parking lot I saw the water looked okay. The Kyll has a dark tea coloration and after the rain it wasn't as murky as I feared.
After getting some lunch at one of the many supermarkets, I fished from around noon till 3 pm. It's crazy how fast time flies when you're having fun. I barely fished a stretch of no longer than 300 meters during the hours as I had found several pockets of small riffles where fish were holding.
I started with a typical Catskill dry fly called a Variant as the Eifel has some resemblance of the Catskills. As fish became reluctant to come up, I switched to my favorite hopper-dropper rig. Most of the fish were caught on the bead head caddis pupa.
All the fish I caught were browns. No trace of graylings or stocked rainbows. Numerous fish between 6 - 10 inches, with several around 12 inches. The largest brown came up to grab the Alien Bug which was a nice surprise. There were no other fishermen which was nice too. I wrapped up around 3:15 pm and headed back to the car for the long drive back home. Maybe I should come back more often again...
