Ourthe - Grayling

Date: 14 October 2016
Country: Belgium
River: Ourthe
Nearest city/town: Nadrin
Fish: Trout, Grayling, Chub
Technique: flyfishing
Gear: 6-weight rod, floating line, 9-foot 4x leader, 5x tippet, dry fly (mayfly, super pupa, caddisfly) & nymph

Today we left early for a +2 hour-drive to the province of Luxembourg in the South of Belgium. We went to a stretch of the river Ourthe that is completely isolated, so we had a nice walk to the river in the morning cold.
We walked down-stream for about an hour before we started fishing up-stream.
Fishing in this overwhelming nature without coming across any fishermen or even other people was amazing.
When the sun got higher and temperatures raised, the number of insects above the water increased. It started with some small sedge flies but in the afternoon there were, much to our surprise, beautiful blue and dark red mayflies on the water.
We didn't catch many fish today but quite a variety: trout, grayling and chub. Again we saw a group of big barbels lying in a pool but we couldn't seduce them to take our nymphs.

Fly tying - DIY

I think it's important to, at least try to, tie your own flies. It makes you to think about the kind of flies you will need and how they look. It will really let you appreciate fly tying much more. The reward to catch a fish on a selfmade fly...
So I've made a board on Pinterest with some of the flies I want to try to make.
I've started with some of the basic fly patterns I think need to be in your fly-box: parachute-mayfly, f-fly, dyret (rough water caddis), sedge fly, some maggot-like nymphs and maybe some terrestrials like ants. Luckily, my fishing buddy Ulf brought a lot of his fly tying stuff with him from Norway and taught me some of the basics. I just hope I will get better at it over time...