Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Last week I wrote about discovering the fly fishing possibilities in everyone’s home waters. A lot of great feedback followed. Several fly fishermen agreed to not nearly have fly fished all their home waters yet. Indeed I too had a few spots left to discover in my own home waters!
One spot was the harbor just a few minutes away from where I live. Great spot to fish for pike perch. Many anglers are fishing jigs all day long. Then there is a lot of boat traffic during the day time. I fly fished all spots in day light quite often, but had very little success in catching pike perch. During the last weeks I found out that most pike perch started to hunt for food half an hour after darkness came in. That was precisely when all anglers had stopped throwing their jigs in, when all boat traffic had stopped and when the whole harbor was suddenly getting very calm. The key to catch pike perch now was to use a floating line and present my fly in extremely low speed almost permanently touching the bottom in very shallow water. One to four feet proved to be the perfect water depth to fly fish for pike perch. In the day time I only caught a few pike perch in eight to fifteen feet of water depth. Not a single take in shallow water. During the past week now there wasn’t a single night in which I didn’t catch pike perch. Simply I discovered to have a serious great fly fishing just near my living place. It took me 30 years to find out!
Another great fly fishing possibility to discover was the large Elbe River passing by right next my home town. The problem was the muddy water. The visibility is around one inch. Who would have tried to fly fish for carp here!? And there are not many carps in. I didn’t for the last 30 years. Right now I found out that there is a fair chance to catch carp on high water along a shallow bank. Carp are travelling that bank in order to find food for about half an hour on highest tide. I tried to present a salmon egg fly upstream fished with a strike indicator. Also I tried to very slowly retrieve a small white streamer just on the sandy bottom. With both methods I nailed down carp. No doubt I was the first fly fisherman to have caught a carp in the whole lower part of the Elbe River. But hey this is fantastic fly fishing with a chance to hook up with an incredible huge fish. And they are beautiful fish. Fair to say it took me many fishing days without catching any fish before I finally nailed down these two possibilities to have a great fly fishing in my home waters. No doubt every none catching day was worth it!
All in all Marina and I had a great week of fly casting, fly tying and fly fishing every day. Opposite to Paul we caught several fish.
Catchy week to all of you – especially to Paul! ;)
All my best
