River Traun (Germany)  

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by Luis Villas Tomé    

After ten fishing trips to Austria, I often wondered if fishing in Germany would be as good. After reading a lot in the Internet, I decided to visit the private fishing waters belonging to Rudi Heger in the Bavaria region, an hour and half east of Munich. The trip took place in mid September 2015. The Rote Traun is a tributary of the Traun and its estuary delimits the section of the Weisse Traun. Located just five minutes from Siegsdorf, during our stay it had been suffering the drought. It had an average width of 8 meters, alternating currents with short backwaters areas and bushy banks. There is a lot of fish , mostly rainbow. Among 3 persons, we caught about 80 trout, some small, but at least two dozen of between 400 gr and a kilo. They were rising at times, although most of the catches happened on small perdigones nymphs. It was a fun day, yet we could not forget the trout under the bridge opposite the hotel. It will be our destination for the next day.


Thus, we had an early breakfast and headed to the bridge downstream. As we had imagined, it was full of trout but it would not be easy to catch them. In all urban areas of the different sections of the Traun, trout get accustomed to people, who sometimes feed them from off the bridges.


While we tried a few minutes of fishing under the bridge, by chance, someone from above started to throw some bread to the fish. Trout ? No, piranhas. Amazing. Of course, bread as bait and as well as imitation of breadcrumbs, is strictly forbidden.


Eventually, once the situation with the bread calmed down and after trying a lot of different dry flies and nymphs, we caught very nice trout with imitations of winged ants, as dry fly, and with large nymphs and San Juan worm patterns.


After we decided to split, I went downstream while my companions fished upstream of the bridge . A little further down there was a walkway and under it, a dozen trout , all more than three quarters kilo , and , certainly a huge brown trout, estimated five kilos. I tried everything, but no way . Then suddenly the river got colored and a bit turbid. In this conditions I was able to catch on nymph an incredibly feisty rainbow without. Further downstream, along the bike-path that runs along the river , every time I saw an attractive position I went and fished it and always caught something.


Approaching the upper limit of the section, where the river flows flat and shallow it was a real festival of trout feeding on surface. At least fifty fish rising continuously. I caught no less than two dozen, most brown trout, half of them were around 25 cm. The eldest, a splendid brown trout about a kilo, broke my leader after a fast run upstream and a spectacular jump.


A few hundred meters away, my companions had enjoyed a great time fishing with dry-fly on medium to good size trout, some of them up to two kilos. It was a day of great fishing. We quit before nightfall and celebrate the day with a typical Bavarian dinner and plenty of delicious beer.


DEUSCHE TRAUN –German Traun “Hochberg” 4 km. My companions were in the upper half of the zone, while I went down to the end of the section. In the middle of the stretch there is a dam, and under it, the river had significantly less water. I wondered as I walked down the bike-path if I was on the wrong way ... but no. There was little water, but enough.


The river was full of fish , and although with dry fly was hard to fish, the San Juan worm has been showing the most productive. In two kilometers I caught fifty trout, most rainbow, at least a dozen between half a kilo and kilo. Very, very funny!


Upon arriving at the dam, just below it , there were half a dozen trout over half kilo constantly feeding on surface . An hour later, after having changed a dozen times the dry fly , I just got out three fish, all with small emerging from CDC.


My mates were a few hundred meters upstream, at the beginning of a large flat current. Dozens of trout fed on the surface , but they were extremely selective and sipping only very tiny flies. Around me there were at least three dozen trout rising, and after a thousand cast I caught a dozen. Another great day of fishing.


DEUSCHE TRAUN –German Traun “Traunstein” 2’1 km Very little flow at the top of the zone, it has beautiful areas , and as usual , many trout. This stretch gave us the biggest catch of the trip, and probably the big one of the life of Pepón, the lucky fisherman.


The beat runs parallel to the town of Traunstein, and has two bridges, true " hot spots" of the section holding huge trout. Being close to the upper bridge, Juanjo called me on the walkie-talkie and asked me for help in getting a trout ashore. He had been fighting since more than half an hour and he just managed to move her a bit.


When I arrived at his place, it seemed like he had snagged a stone under water . When I got a couple of meter closer , the trout started like a rocket , sometimes swimming upstream , others downstream , with acrobatic jumps. Spectacular considering a trout this big (close to 4 kg). We kept on fishing the spot all three together and sometimes we caught trout simultaneously.


At the end of the day we went on the second bridge , where we had a privileged view from above. From there we could advise Pepón about the position of the biggest trout. We spotted a giant rainbow trout, looking more like a salmon than a trout. She swallowed a large deer hair caddisfly that this time, based on the previous experiences with big ones breaking the tippet, was tied to a robust 0,20 mm.


The Trout started a run of over fifty meters while Juanjo and me went down to help. Juanjo, landing net in hand, after a hard fight, barely managed to get her into the net so big she was. We had no scale or weight, but all three agree that it measured about 80 cm and weighted more than 6 kg. Huge .


DEUSCHE TRAUN –German Traun“Traditional” 3,1 km The last day we fished the section called "Traditional" , for me the most beautiful , especially in late September , when multicolored leaves fell from the trees. Beautiful landscape, like a post card. Although the zone holds many trout, some very large, the amount of big fish is less than the sections of the past days. The truth is that the section has several places in which a fisherman can stay all day, fishing on plenty of fish , although not easy. Whenever they feed on surface , they were sometimes exasperating, as both trout and grayling looked very closely at our imitations and demanded for perfect presentions with very specific flies. This was fish may require the fisherman to at times an emerging on hook 22, or a winged ants or a caddisfly on size 12..


Among us three we were able to catch about one hundred trout, plus a few dozen small trout we caught with small nymphs. Most of the trout we hooked with small nymphs were small. At least half a dozen trout weighting between three quarters of a kilo and two kilos. I lost a big one of about three kilos in shallow water by using the nymph that gave us the largest catches, the San Juan Worm. It's strange but in the Rudi Heger shop, where there were hundreds of flies and nymphs to buy, they had no San Juan. I dread to think what may be a spring day with the river with more water flow, a hatch of mayflies and these fish feeding eagerly on the surface. A dream.


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