Austria - yes that's right Austria

Report posted July 31 - but fished in Austria June26/27...

Burned a ton of miles and decided to get the kids some Old Europe culture.

This was the Fishing Hutte we spent a night in.
outside:

inside:

The back yard of the utte:


We hiked up the side of the valley to get a close look at one of the waterfalls coming down from the ice fields.





This valley is above the Krimml wasser falle - highest in Europe.

The kids at the top of the valley.



and there was trout:




The Krimml Achental is 14KM long, ending in a glacier at the head of the valley that is coming down off of Großglockner the highest montain in Austria. ( I think ). The fishing access is all controlled by the Braurup Hotel family, apparently they have been contolling it for the last 400 years or so. They issue daily permits to the 200KM of prime waters that they control, at 25 euros a day. The 14KM of the Krimml above the falls is in a preserve, that limits the rods to 10 a day, fly only, complete C&R. There were two other fisherman there for the two days I was there, I did not see them any near I was fishing, but I ran into them in one of the two "restaurants" that are up there. Basically old alpine farmhouses and the families that live in them sell beer, and homemade weinerschnitzel and milk and cheese made from the 8 or 9 cows they graze, and have on the farm, and I swear that the cream and cheese soup tasted like the wildflowers they were grazing on.



It was blazing sun while we were there with occasional rainclouds blowing through. So - by midmorning the river itself would be up in high runoff mode. I couldn't cross the river to get to this pool and big back eddy, but some monster trout were steadily rising to a grey and sulfer hatch beyond my ability to cast and mend and float a dry into this. These trout laughed and mocked me all afternoon.



The high water did bring up all the small feeders flowing in from all the waterfalls though and the trout did take refuge in these.



These were fishes that came from these feeders on dries of various types.
















The second day in the evening I fished a different stream. Thom the guide at the shop at the Braurup sent me to it. I don't know what it was called. It looked like this.



Got a few from this stream - including the biggest fish of my two Austrian fishing days.



Had one on this stream at the base of a plunge pool that I never saw. It just broke me off after about 30 seconds.