Fly fishing in Germany, Part 13 - The Ilm River (Weimar)

I made one last fishing trip before I packed up the bags (mostly filled with books) and headed back to the motherland. There were a few options, but it needed to be pretty close to Halle. So, I decided to head down to Weimar and fish the Ilm River. It’s a decent sized river that runs directly through the city, and like Erfurt (Gera River) has a good representation of brown trout.

An hour on the train and I jumped off in the city of Goethe and Schiller – but I wasn’t in the mood for poetry. You can get an Erlaubnisschein (permission form) from the Zoomarkt which is located almost directly behind the train station. But to get there you need to walk underneath the tracks, enjoying the beauties of artwork from a formerly communist country, and make a right on Rießner Straße. They store is located in a large yellow building.

The form cost 20 Euros (expensive), which would have been cut in half had I belonged to a fishing club. Ah the benefits of being a part of the gang. They also nickel-and-dimed me for a self addressed, stamped postcard to report what fish I caught. Whatever. I’ll probably use the stamp to send a note to someone…. who cares.

The one thing I regret most of all from the whole trip was leaving my bike behind. From the train station to the bottom portion of the river, below the city park where it enters into Weimar, it took me a solid 45 minutes. It might have been just as productive, and easier to reach, if I had tried the section of the river that exits the city, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Anyways, I made it down to a section of the river about 100 yards beyond the Bienenmuseum (Bee Museum) and began fishing below a small spill-over dam. It didn’t take long before my Royal Wulff weight a bit more than usual. The section surrounding the museum, if you can get to it, was relatively successful. I believe I pulled five decent sized browns out of the section, and could have had a lot more, if I wasn’t concerned about time.

Being mindful that I needed to catch the train back to Halle, I started walking downstream, throwing a Woolly Bugger in the deep, slow moving sections of the river. [The Ilm, like a lot of German rivers had been dug out near and in the city. City dwellers of an earlier time would use the river to transport things, and so it resembles more of a channel than a river.]

Toward the end of the excursion I had strikes and hook-ups with two relatively large trout. The first rolled off my streamer and the second I played like a bad bluegrass song. I left the river pretty aggravated that the last one got away. I was situated in a great pool situated right under the "Romisches Haus" in the park.  I guess I was too worried about what it would look like on film, and not enough with the amount of freedom I was giving the fish to do its thing. Oh well.

 The truth is, the Ilm is not very pleasant to fish in Weimar, but I am certain there are some large fish hanging out in the deeper sections. It looks like the section in Bad Berka is much more to my liking, but it was virtually impossible to get in touch with the club in charge of that section. So, with that, I am headed back to the land of good bluegrass music and great BBQ.