Huchen catch numbers have plummeted

It has become significantly more difficult to catch huchen in public waters over the last few years. This is particularly evident in Slovenia. I am frequently asked by colleagues and anglers on the water what I think might be the reason for the drastic decline in catch numbers there. In my opinion, several factors are responsible. While professionals are able to adapt to some extent and occasionally have success, less experienced huchen anglers often struggle and usually come away empty-handed. Part of this problem is self-inflicted and could be remedied, while other parts, unfortunately, cannot be changed.

Thirty years ago, only a handful of fly fishers targeted huchen. The necessary equipment simply wasn't available for truly effective fly fishing for huchen. The niche was still too small for manufacturers to justify producing dedicated rods and lines. Around 15-20 years ago, streamer fishing began to gain momentum. However, virtually all the fish caught at that time were landed using very heavy streamers weighing over 30 grams. These were usually cast on running lines, and one author even dared to refer to this as fly fishing for huchen, although this type of fishing was clearly spin fishing, even if a fly rod was used. Despite this, these catches were marketed as fly fishing for huchen in well-known magazines. This nonsense spurred me on to design rods and lines, thus helping to make proper fly fishing for huchen possible. With my CTS huchen fly rods, RIO lines, and plenty of tips on my website, I've had some great catches.

Posting catches on social media, and of course the trade, have contributed significantly to a veritable rush on huchen waters. The consequences were predictable. Some waters were practically overrun. In Slovenia, huchen anglers must fish in pairs, partly for safety reasons, but also to prevent the illegal removal of huchen. So, if I want to fish as a club member, I have to find someone, or even persuade them, who didn't actually intend to fish that day. While this rule makes sense, it also means that there are up to twice as many anglers on the water as there would be without it. The more anglers there are, the more the huchen are disturbed, which has a particularly negative impact during low water levels. Spin fishing, with its high casting frequency and loud landing noises, is particularly responsible for the near-zero catches during low water. While day licenses for the Sava Bohinjka River were reduced this year, they remain far too expensive during low water. At best, they would only be suitable for shared rods (two anglers fishing together, but only one actively fishing at a time). Because everyone wants to fish an untouched spot, the huchen are often disturbed very early in the morning, even before their main activity period begins. They then become unresponsive or flee to their hiding places, only emerging again after dark. If this happens frequently, huchen become uncatchable during low water, as they then hunt only at night – especially around the full moon.

In some clubs, there are members who are on the water almost every day (!) during the huchen season and have logged 80 to 120 fishing days for huchen. The huchen thus see the lures almost daily during this time. That's clearly too many, and a reduction in the number of days spent surveying these waters would be appropriate.

While in previous years, for example, one was lucky to find water levels below 40 m³/h on the Mur River in winter, this is now easily achievable. Currently, the flow rate at Zeltweg is a mere 15 m³/h! I could hardly have imagined something like this five years ago. The last three winters have seen significantly lower flow rates than before. While it's now possible to fish spots that were previously inaccessible, extremely low water levels can bring fly fishing to a standstill. While experienced anglers, when fishing alone and possessing good casting skills, can still hook the occasional adult huchen even in such challenging conditions, this is immediately over when angling tourists, with or without a guide, appear. These tourists lack both the skill and the sensitivity to the situation and, without realizing it, chase the fish into their hiding places. The huchen then usually only emerge again after dark. Hunting at night is safest for them, leaving the anglers at a disadvantage.

The low water levels of the last few winters are a major reason for the declining catch rates in waters where day licenses are issued, while this is less pronounced in less fished and therefore less disturbed private waters. We are powerless against nature, but the situation could be mitigated somewhat.

Solution:

• Adjusting the issuance of day licenses to water levels and prohibiting guided fishing during periods of low water.
• Prohibiting spin fishing below mean water levels on rivers or sections of rivers where fly fishing is permitted.

This would significantly reduce disturbance to the fish. However, long-term vacation planning would become more difficult because licenses could not be guaranteed in advance. This regulation would benefit annual license holders, who would certainly not be unhappy about the absence of angling tourists during periods of low water.

Years ago, I pointed out the consequences of guided fishing for huchen (Danube salmon). For me, the huchen is the king of our Alpine rivers, a fish that must be hard-earned and not handed to you on a silver platter. Quite apart from the fact that a guided huchen doesn't count as a self-caught huchen for seasoned anglers (see comment on guided fishing), the angler usually undervalues ​​their catch, like anything that comes easily. When an angler catches his first huchen after dozens or hundreds of hours of fishing and many experiments, it's undoubtedly different than landing or getting in contact with a fish on the first day with a guide. For me, guided fishing for "the fish of a thousand casts" has always been a no-go. I can understand accompanied fishing for safety reasons, but guided fishing trips with all that entails should, in my opinion, be avoided because there aren't that many fish of this species, and you only truly learn to appreciate them through persistent fishing. I'm happy to support guided fishing trips for trout and grayling, as well as other fish species that are present in much greater numbers, as long as the guide adheres to the unwritten streamside etiquette, which includes rotation if others also want to fish a good spot.

Guiding for huchen (Danube salmon) has led to many negative excesses, especially the use of tackle combinations that belong to the realm of spin fishing. When guides then share their best streamers, tactics, and fishing techniques and advertise their catches on social media with photos, sooner or later large numbers of fly fishers will be fishing in the same way and... even with the same flies. How sick is that? Anyone can imagine what this means for an already overfished huchen water. A big huchen doesn't forget what's going on here so easily. When I caught my first huchen (admittedly on a spinning rod) more than thirty years ago, true huchen specialists would always cut off their lures and put them in their pockets as soon as someone approached. At the time, I thought this was a bit excessive, but I always followed the practice when someone confided their secret lure to me. "If the huchen sees a lure too often, it stops catching them!" I was told. This is indeed true, but this knowledge has apparently been lost! If two huchen fishers fish the same pattern the same way this halves their chances. A large huchen is hardly caught more than once a year and a fish that got lost or sees your pattern being fished in a silly way the hucho will avoid it next time. As you can read in my book on nymph fishing, even super nymphs can be overfished if they are constantly being used and passed around. With huchen, this happens very quickly.

Another reason for the fish's refusal to, or even their flight from, flies or streamers is fly fishers who go to the water at low water levels without a certain amount of casting experience. Let me be perfectly clear: Anyone who isn't skilled, meaning someone who isn't proficient at casting large streamers and lacks years of practical experience catching and playing large fish, has IMHO no business fly fishing for huchen! They're ruining huchen fly fishing, and even if they do manage to hook a fish with a guide, the fight will be unnecessarily prolonged at the fish's expense. Huchen are not fish for beginners or inexperienced anglers and should never be considered simply because they're expected to land one!

An experienced huchen angler moves very quietly in low water, often takes longer tactical breaks or changes location after one or two casts in a challenging, overfished area, and only wades to and back from feeding spots if absolutely necessary, but never across an entire pool. Above all, they maintain a safe distance from the fish. This is completely different from the approach taken by inexperienced beginners without sufficient casting practice. Anyone who has to fish behind a splashing, quickly wading angler shouldn't expect a bite. Guides should be held accountable in this regard. Guides usually skip the required pre-trip checks on experience and sufficient casting skills as a prerequisite for guiding, as long as the price is right. After all, there's nothing easier than a huchen guiding trip, because if nothing is caught, it's the rule rather than the exception, and customers generally don't return once they've received the information they wanted. Now, if an inexperienced customer has booked a huchen guide trip, he wants to fish and cast. He has been waiting a long time for this. But others want to fish too. If there are only a few spots available and it can't be explained to a customer that he'll have to spend most of the day waiting, and he can't even cast to the fish but practically has to stand on his head to reach him, the fishing chances are reduced to zero. It is even worse if the guide, against the better judgment, lingers at hotspots with his client casting streamer after streamer...

Thirty to thirty-five years ago, it was clear to everyone that dry and wet flies, as well as streamers—basically anything with feathers or hair—were fished with a fly rod, while spinners, spoons, wobblers, twisters, soft plastic lures, and even huchen braids were used with a spinning rod. This was also stated in all standard fishing literature. This separation of lures served, among other things, to ensure the long-term preservation of these techniques. With the rise of fly fishing for pike and the associated catches, which were reported in fishing magazines, spin anglers increasingly combined hair and feathers with their lures, eventually using streamers with Sbirolinos, hard plastic weights, or the standard lead head. It was foreseeable that this would limit the fly fishermen's chances of success due to the greater casting distances and expanded fishing locations. After Manfred Kleinhagauer inspected my rabbit fur streamers during an encounter on the annual huchen fishing trip to the Drava River near Oberdrauburg in the late 1990s, he immediately began producing and marketing the Huchenwedler upon his return. A little over 15 years ago, Kljech also started manufacturing and selling multi-section streamers for use with spinning rods. Meanwhile, on many waters in Slovenia and Austria, the common, unweighted huchen streamers used by fly fishers are increasingly being cast with a lead weight or Cheburashka weight on spinning rods. The use of streamers by spin fishermen, who already have a clear advantage in terms of unlimited location choice, casting distance, and inconspicuous presentation, leads to overfishing of the lure and, in the long run, to its rejection, especially in clear, low-water conditions. Even professionals then find it difficult to catch huchen on a streamer. As is well known, once a lure is overfished, one switches to another. While huchen spin fishermen have numerous alternatives with various huchen braid lures, spoons, spinners, wobblers, soft plastic lures, twisters, sponge sculpins, jerkbaits, and chatterbaits, etc., should a lure become unusable due to overfishing, fly fishermen are limited to streamers and mouse/rat imitations, with the mouse imitation only being effective at certain times and in specific situations. This means that once the streamer is out of favor, catches of fly fishers plummet.

Solution proposed:

Streamers may only be weighted with a maximum of 5g of weight attached to the streamer itself. Attaching additional weights to the line or by clipping them into the hook eye (Cheburashkas) is not permitted. On waters where both spin and fly fishing are allowed, anglers wishing to use streamers or mouse imitations must therefore use a fly rod. All the aforementioned lures are thus exclusively used with a spinning rod.

This ensures that all anglers have the same options, and fly fishing for huchen can be preserved as a fishing technique for this species in the long term. In my opinion, spin fishing should be discontinued during low water for the reasons already mentioned. The case of a spin fisherman on the Drava River became well-known. He boasted in magazines about catching several large huchen during low water, until he was ultimately convicted of deliberately snagging (deliberately mishooking) huchen while sight fishing. It's not a pretty sight to see huchen swimming around with lures attached to their backs.

It wasn't so long ago that the huchen had been saved from extinction. However, today only a very few stretches of river offer the huchen the opportunity to reproduce successfully. North of the Alps, the Gail River and some sections of the Mur are considered particularly valuable. In the Balkans, numerous rivers that support huchen are no longer self-sustaining or are threatened by hydroelectric power plants. Therefore, its population is almost everywhere dependent on stocking or supplemental stocking.

In the late 1980s, large flocks of cormorants first appeared, decimating fish stocks. The grayling, in some areas the huchen's most important prey fish, was particularly hard hit. Later, goosanders joined the fray, and for about ten years now, large numbers of otters in the Alpine foothills have been hunting not only its prey fish but also the huchen itself.

This has significant consequences, especially for stocking efforts. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stock yearlings, which are also sometimes preyed upon by adult huchen. In some large, nutrient-rich rivers, attempts have been made in the past to counteract bird predation by stocking adult rainbow trout. Fish over 50 cm in length were intended to deter flying predators from eating the stocked fish. I am a proponent of the "as small as possible, but as large as necessary" formula. Stocking with adult trout stretches this formula and is certainly questionable and expensive for some, but in rivers where the fish can still grow in size, it at least ensures that not all stocked fish fall victim to predators.

In some rivers, it has been observed that while there are numerous larger specimens, there are hardly any juvenile huchen. There is no sign of a pyramid-like population structure. Last year, juvenile huchen suddenly reappeared in catches on one huchen river, even though I had only caught a single juvenile fish in all the years prior. Apparently, this is a stocking effort involving approximately three-year-old fish, which is now proving successful. A three-year-old huchen measuring 50 cm is comparable to a 20 cm trout (and should therefore never be specifically targeted). It only reaches sexual maturity at 70 cm and the age of five. Therefore, stocking with juvenile fish over three years old is perfectly acceptable if it results in fewer losses. The stocking of 500 fish measuring 50-60 cm by the Fisheries Institute in Bled about ten years ago, which was paid for by the power plants at the time, also proved successful. The tagged fish were released into the Sava River above the Kranj dam and subsequently appeared in increased numbers in catches up to 20 km upstream. In some waters, stocking with undersized fish can therefore be a reason why fewer huchen reproduce and consequently, fewer catches are made.

Solution:

Switch to larger stocking fish, provided there is sufficient food available and numerous predators are present. Predator numbers must be reduced to a reasonable level to avoid jeopardizing the successful rescue of the huchen again.

After extreme flooding with a suspected total loss of cyprinids, the question also arises whether an initial stocking with chub and nose might be appropriate.