Austria is a quite small but
lovely country in the heart of Europe. It is much better known for skiing
than for fly fishing although some of the rivers definitely offer some of
the best trout and grayling fishing in the world. Rivers like the
Gmundner Traun, the
Salza, the Mur(former world record brown trout –
16kg), the Steyr, the Isel or the
Drau are well known and attract people from all
over the world. But not only browns, rainbows, brookies and grayling are
resident in these alpine streams, but also the
danube salmon(hucho hucho) a relative
of the siberian taimen (hucho taimen and hucho perri) lives there and the
world record fish(35.1 kg)
was only recently caught in the river Drau.
Excellent fly fishing
After the snow melt the
Austrian rivers (except those with pond and release power plants) are
often gin-clear for the rest of the season and provide excellent fly fishing.
They open between March and May and the season usually closes in October with a
few exceptions. There is a saying:
If you want to fish for large trout - fish American streams, if you
want to catch them, fish in Austria.
In fact because of several reasons they are a bit easier to catch in
Austria than in
the states. The rivers are not as crowded (in some of them you get only
1-3 permissions a day) and they are usually fast flowing. This means that
the trout have to eat more if they want to survive the strong winters.
Only a few rivers are quite difficult to fish.
Problems with birds
In the last 15 years the
waters were badly harmed by cormorants. Their population exploded from
some ten thousand to meanwhile more than 1000000 birds. They nearly extinguished the
graylings in many rivers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland as they
discovered the rivers to be an excellent food supply during their stay in
winter especially when the lakes freeze. I well remember a winter day at
the river Drau when I was fishing for Danube salmon. A sudden splash-like noise
in my back made me turn upstream where I nearly got shocked seeing about
eighty cormorants on the water killing and swallowing my beloved graylings. After I scared them away there
were dead graylings everywhere. Some of them were badly hurt and some
seemed not to have been touched at all. They were laying in deeper holes
reducing their life activities to a minimum to survive the winter. The
sudden stress was just too much for them. Meanwhile the European Union has
removed the cormorants from the list of totally protected birds. Tens of
thousands of these birds are shot every year in Europe and the
grayling populations seem to recover again. But also the merganser
population causes bigger and bigger problems.
Grayling country
The grayling is -because of
its selectivity and size- still the most wanted fish of our fly fishers.
A lot of them dream of a
specimen grayling exceeding 20 inches. In some rivers they grow really
big up to a size of 30 inches(!) with 20 inch fish being quite common. The
real grayling giants of 3-4 kg of weight are never published in newspapers
or angling magazines. These catches are kept as secrets because otherwise
the leasing rates (most of these waters are leased from the Republic of
Austria or some private owners for a certain period of time) of the waters would rise and
the waters could even be lost after the next leasing period when others
here about these grayling giants and therefore offer more for the beats. And the
leasing rates are already high enough. This is
the reason why fishing top waters in Austria is very expensive.
Costs of daily permissions
A daily license for one of
the really good rivers is about USD 70-100.- with the most expensive ones
exceeding USD 150.- per day. Some hotels have private waters and the fishing
there can be excellent too, but is usually much cheaper. Most of these rivers are
fished fly only in a more or less catch and release manner although catch
and release is forbidden in many parts of Europe. The people are allowed
to take fish but a lot of them just don`t.
Lake fishing
Austria has a lot of lakes -
trout lakes in higher regions and cyprinid lakes in lower areas. There you
have various possibilities to get good pike, carps, lake trout (salmo
trutta f. lacustris), char (salvelinus alpinus) and coregons (fish quite
similar to mountain whitefish but with much more acceptance and economical value for
the fisheries). Fishing the lakes is quite cheap and there is usually no
difficulty in getting permissions.
State license and fishing exam
In
some parts of Austria a state license is required in addition to the
fishing permit. For visitors who only want to fish for some days it is
usually no problem to get licenses. For applying for an annual license a
fishing exam (up to 30 hours theory in evening classes plus practical
part) is required in some parts of Austria. In these countries fishing for
visitors is only possible for a certain period of time (usually up to two
weeks in a row).
Stocking politics
The
rivers in Austria are stocked with fry, yearlings but also adult fish. In
some of the rivers which suffer under cormorants in winter, especially
where they are not allowed to be shot, large fish are stocked - large
enough to make sure that cormorants can not eat them. So you should not
be surprised when a real monster trout takes your fly.
Fly Patterns
In
Austria a lot of bead heads are used because you have to get down when
fishing fast rivers. All common patterns will catch fish, too. Dry fly
fishing is not as successful as before, because there is a lot more
pressure on the waters nowadays (kayaking, canoeing, canyoning, swimming,
sun bathing,...) . So meanwhile a lot of people fish the nymph.
Streamers can bring you good fish too. Especially Zonker patterns fish
well in the evening and early in the morning.
For more information on the
different waters surf
http://www.g-feuerstein.com/destinations/FF-Austria.htm
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G. Feuerstein©
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