The day started out rather chilly as the night was cloudless which caused a significant cooling.
I tried one of my favorite spots near a removed weir where the rocks created an interesting
current and a deeper pool.
The water was still higher than usual, some of the familiar rocks where still partly submerged.
With fall steadily progressing the shedding of leaves had gone into overdrive.
Many of those leaves ended up in the bottom of the pool I was fishing and the accumulated due
to the eddies in the pool, not real helpful when fishing a nymph.
Still one dace found the nymph and tried to run off with it.
As mentioned earlier the leaves where on the way out and opened up the view to the sky.
Another significant change was that the water had become clearer, signs that the algae bloom was
ending.
Fishing would become tougher for sure,
I could not spot that many fish in the morning and out of the ones I saw I could only
catch a small roach.
Furthermore the competition had also arrived, some of my buddies had the same idea as me
on this beautiful day and I ran into them at one of the parking lots at the stream.
With the leaves causing trouble while nymphing I thought it might pay off to check out one of the
more open sections of the stream and try some dry fly fishing.
It was still fresh outside and only a few midges where buzzing around at the stream.
Now and then a fish would rise but there was not a lot of action going on.
When I spotted a group of dace working their way upstream while leisurely picking off surface
debris I knew I was in luck.
A carefully placed sedges was immediately attacked, one fish caught - the rest fled at high speed
upstream.
The section I fished was very shallow so once you spooked the fish the only thing you could
do was to move and find a new spot.
At one of the bridges I saw some movement and with some luck I caught a few dace before the action died down.
With the increasing temperature and the bright sunshine the townsfolk where out and about and my dace
hotspot became frequented with dog walkers and the like.
Time for early lunch at the pub and some snapshots of the fall colors before it was all over for this year.
The lunch was good as usual and off course I stayed too long in the pub.
When I got out I noticed that the sun was lying rather low in the sky meaning that time of
productive fishing was coming rather fast to an end.
At one of my spring/summer hotspots the sun was still shining on the water and a splash now
and then indicated that fish where present.
Despite the good signs it was rather difficult to catch fish, somehow I felt that the makeup of the
pool had changed and the current was running different.
I caught a few small roach and then headed up upstream to check out some of the deeper pools
where I had done well in the past.
The last fish of the day was a surprise as it was a trout caught in a typical roach/dace spot.
I fished a deeper pool just behind some submerged shrubs when the indicator went down rather
violently and a brown trout suddenly went airborne.
The trout although out of season was the icing on the cake and as light was fading fast this was
the moment to cease fishing.
took one last short break and watched the geese fly over.
The fog was slowly moving in over the field and I though what a brilliant fishing day it
was.