Why do we love fly fishing?

Last weekend my buddy Rolf and I headed for the Weisse Traun in southern Germany. It was our first trip of the year and it turned out to be a very interesting trip indeed. The warm and sunny weather of the past couple of weeks was about to end. Of the three days of fishing we had one day of rain. But all together still a very enjoyable trip.

The gin clear water of the Weisse Traun still blows my mind away. Especially when the sun shines you can see how clear the water is. This also makes a bit hard to sneak up on the fish. Still we managed to catch some very nice sized fish. The second day turned out to be a very wet day. As long as it doesn't rain too hard, the stream stays reasonably clear.

We decided to fish a different stretch on the third day. Since we never really tried the Rote Traun, a tributary of the Weisse & Deutsche Traun, we gave it a shot. Especially since a new much longer upper stretch (4 km) of the stream was added (license wise) to the existing lower stretch (1 km). The lower and upper stretch is divided by a man made dam making interaction between both stretches impossible.

The difference between both stretches are pretty big we found out. While the lower stretch is well known for the nice sized fish, the new stretch appeared to be pretty much yet to be inhabited by the fish, at least any sizable fish. The Rote Traun is also a smaller stream than the Weisse Traun. A short (<7.5 foot) rod makes casting much easier. We were hoping to see some graylings in the Rote Traun, but as in the Weisse Traun we only caught rainbows and browns (= caught in the Weisse Traun BTW). Well, the change of scenery was nice.

We are trying to figure out how to add a video stream to this blog. We filmed some action on the Rote Traun with Rolf's video camera. Fishing with a video camera is really something different than with a (digital) camera since it's such a heavy load. Eventhough the current generation of video camera's came a long way from the huge VHS based trucks, my guess is that in the near future we will see much smaller video camera's. Especially video camera's based on small harddisks will probably make a big difference in weight and size. I won't be surprised if future mobile phones are capable of making really decent video shots. Well, we'll see.

As promised we tried the new yellow colored polarized sunglasses (see posting below) during the low light situations. And boy do they work! The additional contrast and just plain bright view during low light conditions has been a huge help. Just don't forget to take along your regular sunglasses because as soon as the sun starts shining, you're bound to have a very tired eyesight or even a head ache.

This trip showed us again why we love fly fishing. For me it's all about enjoying the friendship, enjoying the solitude and generally having a good laugh.