List, short fishing report - was a short trip as well..
Wife and I decided (Ok, it was the wife's suggestion) to take a 3 days trip to the Ahr. A little river 30 miles south of Cologne, great scenery, vineyards around, old castles, old hamlets, rust and great red wines.
When we arrived there and had checked in at the hotel (some parts of our room were more than 200 years old) I had to check the river, which was verrrrrryy close to the hotel - could see it from our room. Saw a lot of fish. There was a flyfisher arround and he told us, that the tourist information sells licenses. Surprisingly - at least for Klara, my wife - I had some fishing gear in the trunk (There is a secret chamber below the trunk <G>). She resigned and gave the ok to buy a license.
When I had the license, it started to rain. We decided to have some dinner, and when we finished it stopped raining.
I grabbed my stuff and started fishing. I had some awsome hours wading the Ahr. Very clear water, lots of fish - ok, not really trophy water and most of the fish were not trout.
At the beginning I tried some dry flies and had no success, after 1 hour I switched to my personal Chilly Pepper - my blue parachute beetle, with the first cast I had a hit, but couldn't hook it. The fly flew backwards when I tried to hook up, and when it touched the water I had the 2nd hit, but no hookup. No the flyline was tangled and while I was clearing the mess I had the 3rd hookup. This time I could set the hook, cleared the mess, brough the fish to hand and released him. In the following I had lots of hits on the fly but few hookups. Switched to a klinkhammer Variant and the fish liked the fly as well. All fish were small and chubs.
Along the river there was a hiking trail and Klara followed my way, sitting down on benches, reading a book, talking to me. She found even a little restaurant, where she could sit down, having a coffee. So she felt comfortable as well.
At the end of the day I finally found a section of the river, where some bigger fish were. I tried some streamer, Tony's CP but they were not interested. Finally I switched to a Teeny nymph with a bead and they liked it. Caught 4 bigger ones and had a couple of long releases.
I dicided to call it a day, left the river, took a shower and finished the day in a little restaurant with my wife, good food and a great wine.
Klara sugggested to repeat this the next week ... Life can be great. Rene
