Austria is a very beautiful country! The nice thing about traveling to Europe from “The States” is that once you’re over there, it’s relatively easy to travel around to other countries. For my last trip there, the main purpose was fishing for big ZANDER in The Netherlands. I decided to add a flight over to Vienna (and Bratislava). Flights within Europe can be around $100 (USD) ROUNDTRIP if you plan ahead. So I flew from Amsterdam to Vienna. Trying to get any fishing info (where to fish, how to buy a license…) in Vienna was very difficult.  My “pre-search” basically lead nowhere. Austria doesn’t get fished much from people outside the country, especially the US. I did get a recommendation for a local tackle store that could help me out: Gangl GesmbH (Angel Sport Gangl)

The owner was very helpful and pointed me in the right direction. The local fisheries office, which is only open Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was a Thursday, so I already lost a day of fishing. But on Friday, I was up “early” (after hitting up Das Loft and Cuban Mojito Bar the night before…). Went right to the fisheries license office:

The gentleman working was very nice in letting me know that I only had two choices to fish that day. For a full “Austria Fishing License”, you must pass a written exam (which only is available one day each month, AND only offered in GERMAN). Scheiße!!! But to my luck, there were two places I could buy a day pass to fish. One was 70km away, and one was 50km away. I chose the 50km option, which happen to be a small section of the Danube River. He mentioned I was ONLY ONE OF TWO TO THREE AMERICANS HE DEALS WITH EACH YEAR! Lucky me. After a little bit…my papers were in order. I was off to a random LAST MINUTE adventure into the Austrian woods (50km away) chasing after a fish I have never fished before (Asp…also known as “Poor Man’s Tarpon”).

Well, here’s the full You Tube video of my adventure: