The Nagold runs through the Black Forest, in the german region of Baden-Württemberg. Its springs are located in the village of Urnagold, near to Besenfeld. From there, the river flows in direction North-Ovest and crosses Calw, home-town of the famous writer Herman Hesse. After a run of 92 km, it flows into the river Enz in the city of Pforzheim. We have fished the stretch by the village of Bad Liebenzell.

The first part of the fishing area runs upstream of the village and it alternates some fast rapids to flat and uniform currents. Big tungsten bead head nymphs have caught fish even in the mid of the strong white foamy currents. A floating flyline with a well weighted pattern has been more then enough to reach the rigth depth, without the need for sinking lines.

Moving towards the village, the long slow flat flowing parts offer a lot of surface activity even without heavy hatches. The rising fish here are often small brown trout.

There are some good sized grayling. They swim among the small brownies, rising on small mayflies. In the picture a 40 cm. grayling caught on a small beatis deer-haar pattern.

After that the river enters the village of Bad Liebenzell, it runs through the park and the "Apothekengarten", where medicinal plants are grown. Here, during the warm and sunny weekends the massive, presence of turists walking can be at times quite "annoying". In the picture above: a strong rainbow caught on a FX sedge by casting under the tree branches.

From the bridges it is possible to observe trophy fish, not easy to lure though. The stones on the bottom of the river are covered with filamentous algae. They offer hide and cover to a rich benthonic mass. It is not difficult to spot trout feeding head down into the weeds and tailing in the shallow water like bonefish.

At sunset, while carrying out the last casts before dusk, we could notice huge reflexes ligthening up from the bottom of the river. Shapes of at least 60 cm grubbing in search of larvae in the green carpet of water plants. In spite of our attempts with deep sank nymphs we could not determine what they were. Likely large barbel.

In the picture above, the stretch upstream of the village, close to the zone`s border and a nice brown trout.

All the insects shown in this section were photographed at the Nagold, under the natural light conditions of the day in the beginning of Mai.The insects here represented are some of the most present ones or that have been hatching during the days of our visit. The river offers interesting hatches of Ephemera Danica during the month of June. Above a Ephemerellidae male showing off his impressive colours.

In the prairies of algae, it was simply full of tricoptera larvae of the Hydropsyche family (right in the picture above) often characterized by an unusal greenish hue, which surely offer a better camouflage in the water plants. Remarkable in the waterweeds the presence of plenty nymphs of Baetidae (left).

Also the caddies family of Rhyacophila (on the left side of the picture) has been widely spotted during our stay. There was activity of Ephemerellide Major (nymphs on the right) too, in the picture the typical debris covering its body

During almost the all day, with some peeks, the constant presence of flying Hydropsyche has given great chances to pattern like the FX sedge.

These little brown-olive Baetidae, and its imitations, have been often the tie break on fish feeding on the surface. In spite of its tiny size, it was often the preferred choice of the more selective and experienced fish.