You can probably think of a dozen good reasons to visit the historic town of New Braunfels. This is a community that celebrates more than a century and a half of German heritage dating back to the Republic of Texas when Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels brought shiploads of settlers from the Old World to what he thought was an earthly paradise on the banks of the Guadalupe and Comal rivers. There’s the famous Wurstfest, the Lone Star version of Munich’s Oktoberfest, where you can stuff yourself silly on good German sausage and polka your legs into putty. If you’re a smart shopper, there’s a cluster of outlet malls where bargains are waiting to be found. There’s Schlitterbahn, considered by many to be one of the premier water parks in the country. There’s the sheer beauty of the Texas Hill Country and its wildlife.

And then there’s the fishing.

I well remember the frosty December morning I first set foot on the banks of the Comal River with a fishing rod in hand. It was almost 20 years ago. I was a returning student at the University of Texas in Austin, a 45-minute drive north on IH 35. After my German professor overheard me talk about a solo float trip I’d made on the Guadalupe River, he and I began to discuss fishing – a subject with which I was far more familiar than the finer points of the subjunctive mood. It turned out he was a fellow angling addict and lived in New Braunfels. The next thing I knew, Dr. Hans-Bernd Moeller and I were sharing a canoe on the Comal.

Here’s what I noticed first -- even though the pre-dawn temperature hovered in the high 20s, as soon as you approached the river, the air warmed up and you had to shed outerwear. Dr. Moeller – who quickly became “Bernd” – told me that because it was spring fed, the water temperature was just over 70 degrees year around. I’d never fished anything like the Comal. It’s a sparkling, beautiful outdoor aquarium, brimming with bream, bass, and Rio Grande cic ...

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