Fishing The Dragon

What fixes most firmly in our memories from a fishing trip will vary from trip to trip. Sometimes it’s simply the fish – how good, or how dismal, was the fishing. Other times we remember those we fished with – the camaraderie and conversation. Sometimes it’s the weather (generally nasty if memory hangs onto it), or an unexpected happenstance or encounter, good or bad (like the time, with a traditional fly rod, I backcast a barbed Joe’s Hopper into the flesh of my eyebrow; not much else I remember from that afternoon…). And sometimes it’s the stream, a water so spectacular that other elements of the trip, including the fish we caught, recede in comparison. This was one of those outings, last summer in the Swiss Alps, when I explored one of the most beautiful stretches of water I’ve ever fished, and also one of the most dangerous. 

Of many things I enjoy and appreciate about Switzerland, one is that I can fish for trout by public transportation. On an early morning last July I walked three minutes from Corina’s house down to the village train station, and from there I have a choice of reaching various stretches of good trout water by train, bus or a free shuttle to a campground just a few miles outside of town, where some of the best fishing in the valley can be found (the campers are more interested in panning for gold from the river than fishing it for trout). On this morning it would be the local bus, to explore a tributary of the upper Rhine River that before I had only looked upon with speculation and longing while driving the road above. I board the 06:55 am already suited up in my pants waders and boots. At that time of day most of the bus seats are empty.  

From the station the bus eases through town and onto the winding road into the mountains. The road and the bus trace the route of the river below, following it upstream through endlessly spectacular alpine scenery. The bus will reach its last stop in only about 25 minutes, a high pass near the source spring of this branch of the Rhine (from there it’s more than 750 miles/1200 km down to the Rhine’s mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands, at Rotterdam; Corina once walked the entire length). The bus calls at a few farming villages along the way, and at one of these I step off.

The small village perches between the road and the river below and has a track that continues down to the water, to a bridge that provides access to grazing pastures above the opposite bank. Instead of winding my way through the village, I take a shortcut, a path for cows and cowherds through the surrounding pasture. Rain fell a few days ago, and I’m not sure what to expect, if the water will be fishable – clear enough and ‘tame’ enough. Up here at this time of year rains do two things: they add their own volume of runoff to the river, and they sluice in remaining snowpack along the upper reaches. Water levels can change dramatically, and dangerously. You might think you’re fishing a stream, but be careful it isn’t fishing you…

I reach the foot of the bridge, and I am greeted by a sight that genuinely stimulates awe: the river is brilliantly clear, and also crashing, tumbling, and racing toward Rotterdam at a muscular volume. It’s all noise and movement.

The rains and snowpack have done their work, but in a way that has left the river absolutely clear – and cold. I drop in my thermometer, and it comes back at just 44°F (6.7°C) – the coldest temp I’ve yet measured in a Swiss Alps stream. If I’m going to fish it – which I soon decided I was – this was a day to be careful, very careful, especially fishing alone as I was. Water like this isn’t big on forgiveness.

I’d had a close reminder of the risk just a couple of weeks earlier, while fishing in front of the aforementioned campground on a cloudy, chilly late afternoon. The gold panning campers were tucked away for the day in their tents and RVs, and I was alone on the river. Wading past the mouth of a rushing tributary, I saw a fully clothed man jammed in the rocks there, on his back with his face just out of the current. I sloshed to him and found he was alive and conscious, but so cold he couldn’t move and could barely speak, just slur some words – and here the water was a comparatively balmy 51°F (10.5°C). Still, current at that temperature can drain you of life from hypothermia within an hour or so. A slight Asian woman had returned to the river for some final tries with her gold pan and saw us, and together we managed to drag the young guy’s 200 soaking wet pounds through the stream and onto the bank.

Thanks to the proximity of the campground and cell phones there, in less than 15 minutes paramedics arrived and worked to stabilize him, followed by a helicopter that landed and airlifted him to a hospital. I learned later that he made it and was okay. But he probably wouldn’t have survived much longer in the water – he may owe his life to tenkara (and some days I’m sure some of us feel the same way).

As I stand at the foot of the bridge, I decide that my mantra for this day is “no risks” – no risks while wading, and especially if attempting a crossing to the opposite bank. That said, should it be time to check out it would be gorgeous water to die in! Although clear, it’s tinted by a sublime shade of green, a color for which I can’t find a word. Not quite ‘jade’ – the color is sharper than that. Nor is it ’emerald’ – softer than that. Something in between – its own unnamable shade of perfection.

In water like this the fishing will be, well, ‘interesting’. The trout will hold in very specific, small-target lies for maximum protection from the fast current. This will be a chess match, with accurate casting essential – anything landing off target will just get ripped downstream. This sort of challenge can be a lot of fun – as long as some success is the result…

It’s good that I brought one of my best rods, my Oni Type I, 4 m long, rigged with 2.0 YGK ULTRA level line. I tie on a pattern I’ve come to like a lot, a #10 Oxford Wool sakasa kebari, designed by Tom Davis. I want something that will get down, but am wary of going with a beadhead in such fast, rocky, complex water. If a beadhead gets hung on a rock along the bottom, I will not be wading out to free it on this day… The #10 Oxford has enough mass and slimness of profile to find some depth and also stay out of trouble.

Along the opposite bank near the foot of the bridge, probably just within reach of a cast, I note a large, thick slab of rock just below the surface. I surmise that if I was a trout I’d either be under it or behind it. So, I put my first cast to the upstream end of the rock, let the kebari slide past, and bam! – prediction rewarded by a take. And now the second challenge of the day ahead – how to get the trout I hook to net before they can rip free in such water – especially with few safe options to wade towards the fish. Oni-san and I manage, with a bit of luck, to bring this first trout across the current into a pocket of quiet water on my side, and I net a lovely native brown almost a foot long.

By Swiss law, I’m required to kill and keep this fish, since it’s larger than the minimum keeper length for this water, 26 cm (about 10-1/4″). As a personal tradition I typically release the first trout I catch from a stream I fish for the first time – a small gesture of respect and gratitude for the water’s generosity. Swiss law grants an exception to their ‘must keep’ rule: anglers are allowed to release a keeper-size trout that they believe is ecologically significant to that stretch of water (e.g., perhaps a large female plump with eggs late in the season). The spiritual and the ecological are pretty much part of the same realm for me, so I invoke the exception, unhook the trout, and slip it back into the stream. One cast, one good trout – the day looks promising.

Working upstream I quickly landed two more browns, under 26 cm and so released. The fish are a beautiful dark steel color – strong like the water they come from.

And now some concern creeps in that the fishing is too good! I’d like to be out here for the morning at least, but if and when I have a limit of four keepers, I’ll be done for the day, since fishing for catch & release only is illegal in Switzerland. But there was no need to worry. The fishing soon turns more challenging – navigating even more turbulent stretches, finding trout in the tight lies there, and landing those I find.

But the fishing hardly matters. The magnificent water is everything on this day. It is so alive, and demanding of attention. I’m barely aware of the mountains that encircle the valley, or their wainscots of wildflower meadows. I’m fishing through a Switzerland Tourism postcard, but my senses are held by little more than the movement and cacophony of the river. It’s that overlay of danger and beauty that can hold one’s attention utterly (and is probably the draw for climbers, such as our own good doctor Rob Worthing). And indeed, if I want to see Corina or my daughter again, today I’d better keep my full attention on the water.

I get another legal fish to net, and this time it goes into my creel, a nice 31 cm (12.2″) brown. Continuing to work upstream, sticking to the safe, dry ground of the bank as much as possible, I reach a rock wall that forces me to cross to the opposite bank. The crossing is a sort of puzzle, another chess match, in three dimensions – where to next place my wading boot so that I won’t be instantly checkmated in response and swept downstream. I have a wading staff for help, but nonetheless I have to backtrack a couple of times (“no risks”) to look for a safer route across. Traversing a water like this can also offer some lessons in the life and ways of trout, since I’m searching to place each footfall in some lee of the current, some small advantage of reduced flow, no matter how subtle – that is, a potential trout lie. I’m searching for and practicing recognition of what trout seek.

As I ease my way across, a name for the river comes into my head, or maybe the river tells me its name – The Dragon: a mystical green, cold-blooded, extraordinarily powerful, and beautiful. ‘Il Drag‘ in the local Romansh language of the Alps. And while ‘Il Drag’ holds some exquisitely beautiful gifts (a.k.a., brown trout Salmo trutta), which it might surrender, it could also quickly kill you, without anger or remorse. It’s just what dragons do. The key to fishing a water like The Dragon is approach. This is a water to be courted, with care and respect.

At midday I pause on a gravel bar for some rest and a lunch break of mountain cheese and roe deer sausage. Now I can let my eyes roam over the spectacular mountains above, the higher ones still snow-capped here in mid-summer. I’ve landed more than a dozen trout on the morning, and my creel has the comfortable heft of two good keepers. The Dragon has been kind.

After lunch I continue to work the water, and land a few more ‘releasers’ of 8 and 9 inches. Then I drop the Oxford kebari into a slip of water behind a large boulder, see a flash and set the hook. Fish on, and it darts into the current and sprints through it upstream, and its power tells me it’s a good fish. I manage to get it to a standstill and stalemate in a narrow torrent, carefully work up behind it, and ease back into my net the biggest fish of the day, a 33 cm (13″) brown.

For these cold mountain waters it’s a hefty fish, an alpine ‘lunker’. I slit the gills of the trout, asking forgiveness and offering gratitude, and add it to my creel.  

I have one more keeper to go to my limit of four, and the afternoon still has plenty of space. But I decide it’s no time to be greedy, and this is not a river to push things. I fold up Oni-san, clean the three trout I have at the bank, and make my way up through the mosaic of wildflowers to the road. There I strip off my waders and walk a mile or two back to the village where the bus deposited me in the morning.

The schedule posted at the bus stop shows I have some time before the next bus back to town, and so I explore the wee village. All is quiet, no one else about. The hamlet’s good citizens are all either up in the fields or mountains attending to dairy cows and goats, or at jobs in town, or some are in the distant lowlands of Zürich, until their next return visit to their native home. I come upon the community’s exquisitely small church (Catholic, per the culture of these mountains).

The door is unlocked, and so I have a look inside. The capacity of the church reflects the size of the village: four rows of pews that can hold about 30 parishioners (one priest serves multiples of these small villages). At the front of the church is an image of a saintly fellow, who is perhaps holding a tenkara stick and lifting his robe to wade. As he watches, I drop a coin into a box and light a votive candle in gratitude, for the trout, and for a safe return.

The next time I visit The Dragon she might be sleeping, in a calmer, gentler disposition. But just one good rain can rouse her, and so she has my eternal respect, and awe.

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This article originally appeared in the 2025 print issue of Tenkara Angler magazine.

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