So I had this
mad idea about heading to Austria to do some fishing in November. Most fishing in Germany and Austria ends around the end of October. Only a few rivers and streams are known to stay open till the end of the year, I couldn't come up with one that was worth a long drive. Then my thoughts went to those big graylings in the river Möll in Austria some 15 years ago. Mmm... I haven't seen those for many many years.
After a few phone calls I headed for a three days trip to the town of
Bad Ischl. Bad Ischl is known as the summer destination of the famous Austrian empress
Sissi and her Franz Josef. Well anyway, Bad Ischl is some 50km south of
Salzburg, which is just near the German/Austrian border. The main river is the Ischler Traun which is formed by the Goiserer Traun (which runs through the town of Bad Goisern), the Ischler Ache and several other smaller tributaries. Since I only planned three days, I decided to go for the two bigger rivers, the Goiserer and Ischler Traun. And these rivers hold some wonderful fishing, especially big graylings!
I don't know what game the weather is playing in Europe. It has been much too warm in Europe for late November. My first day in Bad Ischl was quite cold (2 C / 35 F), drizzling all day and just plain grey. The higher elevations had some snow as you can see in the pictures. The second and third day the weather cleared up considerably and it was quite warm (10 C / 50 F) and sunny. Not sure what this change does for fishing, but it sure was nice to be outside. The low sun did make seeing my fly or indicator quite a challenge. How about trying to avoid my long shadow spooking the fish in the crystal clear, slightly teal colored, water!
Back to the graylings.
Graylings used to be quite common in the European waters, but due to the increasing numbers of cormorants, many rivers are having problems with decreasing numbers of graylings. Big graylings are getting more and more difficult to catch simply because the smaller ones don't get the chance to grow big and handsome. And boy, are those big graylings a magnificent fish to look at. The big graylings are quite strong too, especially when they manage to use the current to their advantage using the big dorsal fin. It may be a surprise to most, but big graylings like to jump when hooked! The ones I caught were all pleasantly nice, most being in the 16 - 20 inch range. Graylings can grow as large as 60 cm (almost 24 inches!), but these are obviously pretty rare.
The Ischler Traun and the Goiserer Traun differ quite a bit in characteristics. While the Goiserer Traun being a tad smaller in size meanders through the lower valleys of the
Salzburgerland hills, the Ischler Traun is a much larger river that takes possession of the area. The Goiserer Traun starts on the estuary of the Hallstätter Lake. During its course the Goiserer Traun changes from nasty raging river to a very wadable riffle with neat structures like
bends, rocky bottoms with nice pools. Then again to change into a slow moving and very deep
river. I really liked the Goiserer Traun for its ever changing face, so it's a very interesting river to fish.
The Ischler Traun initially looks kinda boring compared to the Goiserer Traun. The large straight path of the Ischler makes it very intimidating when you first encounter the river. One might feel a bit lost at first sight, but soon you will see that the part where the low running river gets deeper the structure of the bottom changes. The pebbly stoney bottom becomes a rocky bottom with small boulders and weed filled pools. This is where I caught most of my fish. But don't forget to fish the lower stretches too! Here in a stretch of just 20 inches of water I caught the largest grayling of the trip.
These rivers hold some very nice spices of fish making fishing quite interesting. I've caught
rainbows,
brown trouts, graylings and brook trouts. One might even run into a nice barbel. I have fished mainly with heavily weighted bead head nymphs, sometimes doubled with a bead head prince or small pheasant tail. Just for the sake of it, I did tie on an Elk hair caddis. Although the water was quite cold, the eagerness to get the dry fly was nothing short of enthusiasm. The takes when fishing nymphs were quite diverse. The (smaller) rainbows took the nymph so hard and fast that the indicator just jumped. The graylings are the gentle takers, just pulling the indicator almost without notice.
So, what's the verdict of this trip? EXPENSIVE, amazing scenery and beautiful
graylings. Since you get to fish three rivers (I didn't spend enough time on the
Ischler Ache to get a real idea of this stream), it's really fun to fish a different river every few days. I stayed at hotel
Stadt Salzburg (hotel has a new owner now with less focus on fly fishing unfortunately). This hotel issues the tickets to the rivers mentioned. Walter is a very nice host as well as an avid fly fisher. The last morning I stayed at the hotel, I ran into a group of fly fishermen from Germany and Sweden. They were in for a real treat because the weather was getting even better with temps up to 15 C (60 F)!
As mentioned earlier, the day tickets for these rivers are really expensive. The day ticket prices range from 60 to 90 Euro's (around 80-120 USD!). This is just too much. In fact, I don't think I'll come back here unless I feel the heart breaking urge to catch some nice big
graylings. I know that the ticket prices are the result of the state licensing to the leaseholders, but with prices like this fishing is only feasible to the most wealthy fly fishermen. The people responsible for the licensing might consider rethinking how to finance the whole system. I'm sure putting reasonable prices for the tickets together with limiting numbers of tickets given per day would ensure the quality of the fishing resources as well as help the tourism to the areas.
A word on the equipment used:
I used a 9ft #5 rod. A #4 rod would be okay if you're fishing with dries a lot, but using heavily weighted nymphs needed to get them to the bottom might make a #4 rod probably too light.
Update 10 okt 2007:
Here's a nice
videoclip on fishing on the Goiserer Traun.
What really caught my attention in this movie is how Lee catches salmon up to 15 lbs using a small Orvis Superfine rod. The bamboo fly rod that is and not a graphite rod. Orvis introduced graphite rods in the mid 1970's (they weren't called the Superfine series back then, just Graphite). In this movie Lee is using the 6ft ONE piece Orvis Superfine bamboo fly rod (Orvis introduced this rod in 1953). Did you know that this tiny rod weighs a mere 1 3/4 oz.?...
For Orvis geeks only, here's a (huge) list of serial numbers (incl. model name) of nearly all the bamboo fly and spinning rods made by Orvis since 1943 to 2004 (and the list is growing every day). Very interesting to see which models were introduced through the years. Warning: this is a VERY LARGE file (almost 8Mb), so it might take a while before it is loaded.
