36 xxxxxxxxx 2016 www.trout-and-salmon.co.uk www.trout-and-salmon.co.uk September 2016 37

OR HARRY POTTER it was the brick barrier between platforms nine and ten at King’s Cross station. For Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund it was a wardrobe in the professor’s house. For me it was an old plank bridge – the boundary between the magical and the mundane.

But there are three plank bridges in this story and it begins on another wooden bridge in the little village of Grossarl in the Austrian Alps. I was looking down on

a bouncing alpine river, the pale rocks of the bottom glimpsed through a wave-capped tumult of crystal waters. This was the Grossarler Ache and the river I had come to fish. It was a good deal more boisterous than I had in mind: I hadn’t the first idea how to set about it.

There are few problems in life that won’t go away if you leave them long enough. I would think about how to find fish in a maelstrom some other time. I’d left England on a cold grey morning of doom and drizzle. Here it was 30 degrees under a clear blue sky – not ideal for fishing, perhaps, but for now I was happy to lean on a wooden bridge in the sun, gaze at the water and wait for the next meal.

It was worth the waiting for. The wooden bridge led across the river to the Grossarler Hof, one of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World. It nestles beside the river in this cosy alpine valley, all sloping roofs and gables and wooden balconies festooned with colourful geraniums. And somewhere under that lot chef Walter Viehhauser does his stuff. It is two-falstaff-fork award winning-stuff, putting the place among the finest restaurants in Austria. The

P H O T O G R A P H Y: J O N B E E R

F

The swollen Grossarler Ache tumbling below the Grossarler Hof hotel after weeks of rain.

Local guide Urs Zulian puts

out a line on the extraordinary waters of the

Grossarler Ache.

Trout, char and leather trousers

Jon Beer enjoys fine food and magical fishing in the Austrian Alps

“It was worth the waiting for. The wooden bridge led across the river to the Grossarler Hof, one of the Small Luxury

Hotels of the World”

38 September 2016 www.trout-and-salmon.co.uk www.trout-and-salmon.co.uk September 2016 39

T R O U T I N G I N A U S T R I A

Jon Beer is the president of the

Wild Trout Trust. He fishes

all over the world and is the author of three books:

Gone Fishing, The Trout and I, and Not all

Beer and Bezencenet.

Grossarler Hof is run by two families. It was late evening. I was in a mellow mood. I had just climbed outside half-a-dozen courses of Walter’s creation when I was joined by Markus Andexer, Walter’s nephew and manager of the Grossarler Hof. He had good news and bad news. The good news was that the weather would hold for another day. It had been a very wet June – which was why the river was so big and bouncy – but the sun would shine tomorrow with just a chance of rain towards evening. The bad news was that the fishing guide who would take me fishing on the Grossarler Ache had been taken ill and couldn’t make it. Perhaps he’d seen the height of the river. In the morning, Markus would show me the valley and the hotel’s water. Then I’d be on my own.

I woke to the sunshine and the roar of the river. It was going to be a hot day. Markus was looking cool enough in a waistcoat and venerable lederhosen that had once belonged to his grandfather. We took a track that hairpinned its way up the steep side of the valley. The family have another restaurant in an old farm high on the alpine summer pastures. From here we could see the whole of the Grossarl valley winding up to the snow-capped wall of Alps at the end. There, beneath a small glacier, the streams that lace down from the peaks gather in Ötzelsee, a small lake where the Grossarler Ache is born. Which is where we went next.

We drove up the valley beside the rumbustious waters of the Grossarler Ache. The valley sides steepened to towering cliffs as we climbed through Grossarl and Hüttschlag near the head of the valley. The road ended at a large car park where families and hikers were setting off for a day in the hills. We carried on, along a small gated track

towards the lake. We could see its waters glinting through a fringe of pines as we approached.

Ötzelsee is an extraordinary place. It is a small, shallow mountain tarn and quite unlike anything I’d ever seen. The bottom is white sand, ground from the granite of the Alps hereabouts. The water is transparent, shading to aquamarine in the deeper channels carved by the skein of streams that thread the jumble of rocks at the far end. And above the pale bottom, suspended in the crystal water, were fish. Dozens of them were visible at a first glance: more appeared as I learnt to look for shadows on the bottom. Some were quite small. Others were not. Some hung almost motionless: others cruised over the pale sand, rising through the water to take something at the surface. But more were feeding steadily, swooping and fluttering in the strong currents of the deeper channels. It was as tasty a sight as this old fisherman had ever clapped eyes on.

A couple of fishermen were having a taste. One stood out in the lake, casting to cruising fish. The other stood at the far end of the lake, casting into the channel where a stream swept in over the gravel beach. His rod lifted and then bent into an extravagant bow as the surface splintered in the sunlight and a fish leapt. Here, at least, was a bit of the Grossarler Ache that was open for business after a wet June. We walked round the Ötzelsee and picked our way across the streams. He was into another fish by this time and I was keen to see what he had on the end – fish and fly.

It was a brown trout. But there was nothing brown about this trout: this exquisite creature had lived its life among the pure waters and pale sands of Ötzelsee. It had bleached to silver-white with a generous scatter of black and vermillion

spots. It was slipped back into the shallows: the upper Grossarler Ache is catch-and-release fishing.

The fisherman showed me his fly, a bushy sedge imitation in deer hair. He was fishing it dry, casting fly and leader in a heap on to the fast channel of an inflowing stream, allowing the fly to drift for a few yards before the leader straightened and the fly dragged. And, by golly, it worked. Between them the two fishermen had returned 20 fish on that warm morning of bright sunshine.

It was midday. Markus was going to a wedding in Grossarl that afternoon: the reception would be at the hotel. It was time we left Ötzelsee. We’d parked beside another wooden bridge where the track crossed the outflow from the lake. For a few minutes we leaned on the bridge in the sunshine and looked down into the water of the Grossarler Ache. I seemed to be doing a lot of this. But here was no maelstrom of tumbling water. No white water, no waves. Barely the slightest ripple. The river flowed swift and serene over the same white sand of the lake. And beneath us, fish hung in the current, rising and dipping to intercept any morsel. Looking downstream, I could make out grey shapes and their sliding shadows until the river swung round a bend in the distance. It was a mouth-watering sight, no mistake. Then we climbed in the car and were gone.

Mulling over that sight on the way back to the hotel, it became clear to me that, whatever else I might do in the time left to me on this sweet earth, I had to fish that top bit of the Grossarler Ache. And, seeing as it was only ten miles up the road and the weather forecast for tomorrow was a bit chewy, it had better be now. I explained this to Markus who, bless his little leather trousers, offered to lend me the

hotel pick-up for the afternoon. And so, a short time later, I was back off up the road, following the Grossarler Ache. It was still a tumbling torrent when I took the gated track to Ötzelsee so I parked the car and made my way across new-mown meadows in search of the celestial stream I’d seen emerging from the lake.

I followed a dirt track down to the river and stood on an ancient plank bridge. Something magical happens there beneath those old cracked timbers. Downstream, the Grossarler Ache was the crashing alpine torrent I woke to beneath my bedroom balcony. Upstream, it flowed in smooth serenity over a pale bed, every stick and stone in plain view. And then a shadow moved and a grey shape rose to dimple the surface.

I tied on an elk-hair sedge, first cousin to the flies the boys had been using on Ötzelsee, but I was so excited that I got the first cast tangled in the tall flowers of the meadow behind me and spooked the first fish something rotten. The second had a good look at my fly and sank to the bottom: this is catch-and-release water – had they seen it all before? I clipped off the fly and tied on a G&H Sedge and offered that. The trout rose serenely, tilted back like a tennis player watching a lob and then grabbed the fly. I had my first Grossarler trout and, in the crystal water under a bright sun, I’d seen every inch of the action.

The following five hours were the most fun I’d had with a fly-rod in my hand. I was seeing fish 20 yards off in the margins or 8 ft down in the depths. I could read greed or suspicion in every flick of a fin, every sink and rise. And, I suppose, they could see me – but if the first cast drifted the fly over a fish, more often than not the fish would rise to

ABOVE Two views from the plank bridge over the Grossarler Ache. Downstream (pictured left) is a tumbling alpine stream in summer spate. Upstream is a glide on a perfect trout stream. The bridge acts as a boundary between the magical and the mundane.

BELOW A dry sedge imitation for the trout of Ötzelsee.

The pale sandy bottom and crystal-clear water of the Ötzelsee lake and the Grossarler Ache are reflected in the colours of their trout.

The huge mouth of a big old Arctic char. A fisherman wades the shallow water of the lake, looking for cruising fish.

40 September 2016 www.trout-and-salmon.co.uk

T R O U T I N G I N A U S T R I A

take a look – only to sink if the fly began to drag. Or the fly would disappear in a swirl and I was joined to another trout – I soon lost count – or to something a little more exotic for a bloke from Banbury. A trout was leaning back and looking when a large shadow detached itself from the depths and lunged past to grab the fly. This was something a little better. It came to hand, twisting and shaking with the large sedge dwarfed in a huge mouth. There was no colourful scatter of red and white spots, just a steel grey flank with the faintest sprinkling of pale spots like fitful snow in a grey dawn. It was a big old Arctic char. No char is ugly but this one was doing its best, with none of the reds or orange of a char in its pomp. Arctic char are native to these high alpine lakes as the scientific name – Salvelinus alpinus – suggests, but this was my first from a river. But not my last as I fished up that magical stream. With the beating sun, the bleached bottom, the crystal water with its aquamarine depths – it was like bone-fishing with a dry-fly. Grayling hugged the depths, trout favoured the margins and char turned up from time to time. One of them got me thinking.

It was a handsome fish, smaller than the big old char and in prime fettle. It had the red fins with a white leading edge: it had the characteristic char livery of pale spots on a darker background. But the background was green, the spots yellow and melding to a pattern of worm-casts on the back – with a sprinkle of pale blue spots with a red centre. Altogether a colourful little number. And I had seen these gaudy patterns before, nearly 20 years ago, in a fish from another Austrian stream. That had been a brook char, a native of North America thriving in a few of these cold, clear waters of the high Alps. Had I found another? This was glorious fishing for glorious fish.

Now it was late and I was hungry. Somewhere down the valley the wedding party was in full swing and uncle Walter had worked his magic on my next meal. But for half an hour or so I could sit by the pick-up and reflect happily on a blissful afternoon until Markus arrived with the jump leads.

I’d left the lights on and flattened the battery.

TEN miles of fly-fishing on the Grossarler Ache is available to residents of the Grossarler Hof. Day ticket: 45 euros. Permit and licence can be arranged through the hotel. The top beat, including Ötzelsee and the magical kilometre of stream below, is catch-and-release only. Search Grossarler fishing for more details.

Grossarler Hof is one of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Visit www.grossarlerhof.at/en for details of accommodation and rates or click on Fly Fishing (bottom right) for more details of fishing packages and guides. I had a guide the following day. It was a cooler, cloudier day and Urs Zulian favoured fishing the lake and the river with weighted nymphs. That caught fish, too.

Eat, sleep, fish

Two trout (or char) in the crystal waters of

the Grossarler Ache.

A char, certainly, but this looks like a brook trout –

Salvelinus fontinalis.

A sumptuous Arctic char from the lake.

Jon’s first taste of the Grossarler Hof and its award-winning restaurant.