As soon as the first closed seasons – for trout to be precise – come to an end in mid-March, the worst of the angler’s suffering comes to an end, so my brother Andi and I were highly motivated and wanted to seize one of the first opportunities to get out on the water. Due to some adversity on the first weekend after the end of the closed season, the time had finally come on Saturday, March 23. We packed our waders and only light luggage and drove to the Alte Dorfen to try our luck for brown trout.
Alte Dorfen
We hadn’t packed rain jackets as we had set off from home in sunny weather. As soon as we arrived at the water, a storm rolled in, which unfortunately not only brought rain, but also strong crosswinds, making fishing practically impossible. We braved the onset of heavy rain for a few hundred meters and tried as best we could to escape the wind when casting, but in the end we had to admit that there was no point in fishing like this.
However, as we were already in the area, we didn’t drive straight back home, but took a short detour to take a look at another club water that only Andi had visited once before: the Nasenbach, a tributary of the Isar, which is located in the middle of a nature reserve and is therefore very natural. The stream can be reached after a walk of a few hundred meters from the parking lot through a forest, which meant that the rain couldn’t affect us any further. Shortly after entering the Isar, we could already see what is meant by “natural” here: every few meters there were trees lying across or in the water, either felled by storms or beavers. According to our board member, clearing is not permitted in the nature reserve, which is why there are hardly any fishing spots or access to the water in summer, when the forest and riverbank are completely green. We followed the course of the river for a while and decided to return later in the day with appropriate clothing. In the meantime, we also received information about lake trout stocking at a club pond, which also seemed worth a try. We therefore returned home first to dry our clothes and make a plan for the rest of the day.
As soon as the sky had cleared, we set off again – this time equipped with appropriate rain gear. First, we headed for the Dorfen once again, where we felt relatively confident that we had developed a good feel for the right sections. Although the decision by the board to reduce the catch limit to one fish per day was somehow also a restriction, as one of us would have had to stop fishing as soon as he landed a catch, we didn’t let that stop us. Andi had the first bite of the day, funnily enough exactly when I told him to. I had gone ahead beforehand and had the advantage of the “unfished” sections, so I let him go first in a spot that had always been promising in the previous year. After a short time, my brother made a perfect cast into the current and I was able to finish the sentence “There must be someone standing there.” just as he managed to record a bite. Unfortunately, the fish got out again just before his landing net. What a shame!
Things went better just 150 meters further on when I left the section to him again and identified the rapids from the bank to give him a little help. Once again, he managed a perfect cast into a fast-flowing area next to an overhanging bush and after a few turns of the crank the strike came again! While he was drilling the fish, I sprinted over to him and helped him land the fish safely with my landing net: a brown trout had landed on the spinner. That was the end of Andi’s fishing day on the Dorfen and he took over the role of spotter for me from then on.
About 50 meters further on, I got back into the water and he guided me from the outside. We passed a relatively straight section without any activity, but when the river took a bend where it was much deeper and flowed faster, I was ready to go. After coming around the bend, I cast my small, red and silver spoon into the middle of the current line and got a really good bite almost immediately! As I didn’t have to cast far, there wasn’t a particularly long distance to cover during the fight, but this fish had real fighting power! When it landed in the landing net, I quickly realized that I had just landed my new brown trout PB. The measuring tape showed 43cm and at home I weighed the fish at 1.008 kilograms! I had also reached my catch limit for the day and we returned to the car.
Nasenbach
We didn’t want to end the day so (early) and so we made our way back to the Nasenbach, just a few kilometers away. Unlike on our previous visit, this time we climbed straight into our waders and then walked along the Isar to the inlet, which also marked the start of our club’s fishing water. We got into the water easily via the relatively shallow embankment and the first sections were also quite easy to fish, although we didn’t record a single bite. Instead, I had another special kind of wildlife observation: two cobalt blue kingfishers flew low over the stream and towards me, and just a few meters in front of me they turned off towards the Isar. Unfortunately, you don’t get to see something like that very often here anymore. The advantages of a nature reserve! However, as soon as we had left the first overhanging trees behind us, the bottom of the water suddenly changed and the previously solid, stony ground turned into a muddy quagmire in which we could hardly move. Even climbing out of the stream was so difficult that I preferred to wade back the same way to leave the stream at a more suitable spot. We had imagined things differently, as we had only managed to get about 500 meters. With the rain setting in again, we thought about it briefly, but then decided to leave it at this short trip to the Nasenbach and try something else. This decision turned out to be the right one, because just before we reached our car, it started to pour like buckets. Despite our rain jackets and waders, we would have been completely soaked in no time at all. Lucky us!
Gravel pond
A few minutes’ drive took us to another club water, a gravel pond that had recently been stocked with lake trout. We started on the eastern shore of the lake and worked our way counter-clockwise bit by bit, overtaking another angler who was also trying his luck with a spinning rod. As I approached the northern shore, I spotted a bird perched on the ground on some strangely draped branches, which I identified as a wild goose as we got closer. Although the path around the water passes some distance from the bank at this point, it spooked and flew away, revealing what it had been guarding at this point: four large eggs in a nest. I quickly moved away without getting too close to the nest, so that the goose returned to her clutch after a short time. After not a single fish had been caught in the north and north-west, I put my last hope in a shallow water area in the south-western part of the lake, which was quite easy to fish from a jetty. Incidentally, I used a red and black, twisted spoon with a single hook as bait, which was the only other bait I used that day apart from the successful spinner from the Dorfen. Here you can take a look at the 2.5g models from the Balzer Trout series. I aimed for the open water with my first casts from the jetty, without success. So I cast across the shallow water zone next and feared I had made contact with the bottom when my light spinning rod suddenly bent: Bite! Just a few turns of the crank and I saw the fish come to the surface and could hardly believe my luck: a not-so-bad lake trout had taken the Twister! Unfortunately, Andi with the longer landing net was too far away, which is why I spontaneously decided to drift the fish away from the jetty so that I could land it in shallow water with the hand landing net. A crucial mistake… I gave the fish the opportunity to swim sideways and into one of the pillars of the jetty. As soon as the line even touched the metal post, the fish was immediately free – and I was super disappointed. We then tried again in the same area with different lures, but no more bites were to come. Still, what an experience! In addition to my brown trout PB, this would also have been my first lake trout. Too bad, but it wasn’t meant to be.
All in all, a very successful day for my new river combo, the Savage Gear SG4 UL on a 1000 reel! As always, you can find the details in the table below. We rounded off the day with a 2:0 win for the German national soccer team against France and – two incredibly tasty brown trout from the oven!
