Fly Fishing in South Wales

This month I will be writing about fly fishing on some of the rivers around South Wales especially some of the new beats available from the Wye and Usk foundation.

7th April 2008

As April starts I start looking forward to the hatches off Olives getting more frequent and also the start of the Grannom hatches as these are often what brings the rivers to life for the year. But with the high wind we have been having it has made fishing of the surface a very patchy sport indeed...

10th April 2008

Today saw me making another visit to the Lower Stanton beat on the Honndu, I really like this beat a lot.

The first pool I came to had a fish rising right on the far bank. I sat for a while watching the water to see if could spot what it was rising to.
As I suspected the munch of the day seemed to be olives.With that in mind on went a Greenwells parachute. After a cast or two the fly drift just right and up came a monster and gulped it down.

What beauty. A real pleasure to see . The quality of this fishery and its piscatorial inhabitants are all down to the people involved in theMonnow Fisheries Association for all the hard work they have done in the last few years bringing these rivers back to their former glory.

Thanks and well done guys.

Alas that was the last of the rising fish all day but not the last of the days fish.

A lovely fish and one of a few from this section of the beat.

The best fish of the day came from above the weir and was well recovered from spawning

You can fish this beat through the WUF roving voucher scheme.

Frank

15th April 2008

Fished on the LRA today. The wind was cold and easterly, not good for fishing even worse for dry fly early season.

I fished heavy nymphs for a while. Which resulted in a couple or three grayling.

Here is one of them.

After that I decide to try fishing woolly buggers upstream!!

After a couple of trial runs I found a successful method of retrieving them.

Here is another from the same method fished down through a back eddy.

Frank

25th April 2008

I would like to thank Andrew for posting via the submission form and letting me know that I had made an error and posted different versions of the same fish twice. I have now fixed it and posted the correct image.

As to your other point, you are correct, we do have a closed season for Grayling hence the change in tactics after I had caught three in a row. It is difficult to spot which species is picking up your fly when fishing sub-surface.

Thank you for taking time to look in.

Frank

28th April 2008

One Last Cast

Skenfrith beat newly available throught the Wye and Usk Foundation booking office.

This is a classic piece of Monnow fly fishing water. It has some nice long glides perfect for dry fly fishing or a bit of early season upstream spider fishing.

I arrived at the parking and started to get my waders on just as a hail storm started!!

Hmm!! Might be a tough day I thought to myself. I had only just arrived at the waters edge and already I had experienced all four seasons.

The river itself was a little coloured and racing through faster than would have been ideal due to the extra water it was carrying.

I set up a ten-ish foot leader with three droppers and tied on a combination of a GRHE nymph on point, a rainbow and black on the middle and a small peacock and black on the top dropper. I had a bit of a prospect around the edges of the riffles out of the way of the raging currents.

This was the first to fall to my Black and Peacock. The action was a little slow in the early part of the day due to the water being very cold. As the day progressed it did warm up a bit and the pace of the river slowed somewhat.

I was down near the bottom of the beat when a few fish started to rise. Ha ha !! on with the dries, but what are they taking?? There was a little bit of everything hatching, a few Olives some Midges and Smuts and a few Grannom.
So what to put on? Ah yes, the ubiquitous little black number, only this one is by Hans van Klinken rather than Coco Chanel and, as ever, it came up trumps.

As the day's fishing was drawing to an end, I was walking back in "one last cast" mode when up ahead I heard the sloop of a fish sipping down 'spents '.
"One last cast!!", I think.
Cast, nice drift, bump, missed the take. You know the sort of thing; line goes tight, feel the fish, line goes slack, exclamation of 'Drat' or some such thing!!
And I think "One Last Cast!!"
So out goes the cast right next to the roots trailing into the river from the bank, drifts along nicely again, bump and lift into the roots. "Drat" I exclaim once more. I have a good old wiggle and tug but it does not come free so I move upstream of the place it is caught to give it a good yank to get it free. Just as I yank to break the tippet a nice brown trout of about 13 inches leaps on to the black and peacock on my top dropper and breaks off my middle dropper and point fly which stay attatched to the snag.

The trout however stays attached to my leader and I managed to net it after a bit of a tussle.

These are the moments that justify One Last Cast!

Frank

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