Beanhill Lake is back to its usual clear condition. However, the wintry weather has discouraged visitors; those few anglers who have been out on the water have done well with small nymphs. Mr Watkins from Pontypool drove over for a day and took four rainbows of around 21/2 pounds using small buzzer patterns. The fish are in particularly good condition at this time of year, silvery and muscular, and will give a good account of themselves, once you can get them to move to the fly. In 5 or 6 weeks, when the spring buzzer hatches really get going, there will be some of the best fishing of the year.
But for now, it’s cold and grey, and when I went down to the lake yesterday it was half covered with ice and completely surrounded by lying snow, although noisy enough with the various coots, dabchicks, waterhens and ducks fooling around and getting ready for their spring mating rituals. There was no sign of fish on the surface, though, and I was flicking a PTN around rather disconsolately with the 5 weight rod and a floating line, when a big, solid rise suddenly erupted at the edge of the ice in the deep water off the dam. When I had established in my mind that the disturbance was not actually a disappearing coot, I dropped the nymph on the spot, let it sink and brought it very slowly back. Nothing happened. Twice more I cast into the spot without result. Then I tried letting it sink for a few seconds before giving a sharp draw of about 18 inches with the retrieving hand. That did it! The line slammed tight and in a moment something heavy was boring down under the ice pack so that I had to cant the little rod over on its side. A few anxious minutes later, I nested a pristine brown of about 41/2 pounds. The fly was the Oliver Kite version of the PTN, size 10 in this case, and more copper wire than pheasant tail. Apart from its famous chalk stream pedigree – including the Gloucestershire Coln where it will take stocked and wild trout – it’s very good on mid-winter lakes and a very useful stalking bug at any time of the year. And this is a fly which it pays to twitch along a bit at times – after all it was designed to imitate an agile darter - so once it has sunk, give it a tweak to attract attention!
The sun came out, and I was all ready for the rainbows to begin rising to little winter midges. I made preparations by putting a little Snipe and Purple spider on the light rod and put it to one side, while I carried on prospecting mid-water with the 6 weight rod using a clear intermediate line and a Black and Peacock Spider. But a front came over, heavy rain began to hose down, and there was no sign of the rainbows or a rise at all, until I managed to contact a shoal and take a couple before dark. Instead, it was a day for the browns to be moving for some reason, and two more heavy fellows between 3 and 4 pounds snatched the BPS during the afternoon. All these fish, although in lovely condition, had some slight grazing of the belly skin, as you sometime see on salmon and sea trout that have been running over the gravel, and one or two leeches attached to fins – a sure sign that they have been spending time right on the bottom. Although out of season, most of our browns are triploided now, and I don’t believe careful playing and release during winter does them any harm. However, we were upset when a gentleman either didn’t read or ignored the rules and killed a 5 pound brown the other day. We ask that all browns be released, and that is why we insist on barbless fishing at all times.
On the upper Wye, after the floods which closed the river down for practically a month subsided, there have been some very good grayling catches made. The Foundation has reported some exceptional catches of dace and chub from the middle river also. As the water came down and cleared, I managed to get a day on Charlie Picton’s beat of the Irfon just above Builth Wells, and chose to fish the upper part of this 3 mile stretch, parking the Landrover in the woods on one of the estate’s shooting tracks. This is wild water, which drops a good 30 feet over about a mile, full of fast runs and long gravel pools between the falls, which would have rising trout and grayling all over them by mid-summer. But I fly-fished down the whole stretch during the morning using traditional grayling flies, and could not find a fish. Either all this water was devoid of grayling or they were hard on the bottom somewhere. After lunch back at the car, I put up the trotting rod and centre pin, started out at the top again at the Glaslyn Pool, and bingo, there they were! Lying in apparently turbulent water between two heavy currents at the head of the pool, in a space measuring about 6 feet wide by about 30 feet long, was a shoal of heavy grayling which must have contained well over 100 fish. I couldn’t see them in the turbulence and froth, and they were certainly on the bottom, but every trot down the float disappeared within seconds. The bigger fish at the front of the shoal were around 16 inches – the size which can go wherever they want to with a push of water to help them - and the main difficulty was playing hooked fish up through the power of the current to a position where, crouched waist deep at the cheek of the pool, I could net them. This where a 14 foot trotting rod doesn’t match well with a short river net; and one with a handle would have been useful. To my great frustration, the first four or five fish just came off as the size 16 hook pulled out, until I found a way of playing them up to a point just upstream of me in the slacker water, and then swinging them across and backwards into the little net. Over the next two hours I played and released 20 grayling between 12 and 17 inches, and had probably pricked or lost a similar number. They were still biting as hard as ever, but I decided that was quite enough disturbance to inflict on a single shoal of fish, and that it was time to end what had turned out to be an exceptional day. Worth noting, too, that by wading up on a gravel bar from the tail of the pool during the morning, I had covered these fish on a long cast with wet flies, and had no reaction at all. They were there all right, but they were not rising. Three weighty Czech nymphs would probably have got down to them if I had known and that certainly is the fashion these days, but, given a choice of method - and this is a personal preference - I would opt for the more delicate trotting gear and float with a single or double maggot over bugging under the rod top every time.
Two weeks later, after absence on a business trip and having missed some perfect river fishing conditions, I was back again, this time standing in the main stem of the Wye at Pwll y Faedda near Erwood. Despite the fact that snow fell all through the day and the temperature was around freezing, so that you had to dip the rod under the surface to free the rings on every trot down, the water was unusually low and clear, and grayling fed steadily along a trench in the lower part of the Boat Pool. As every winter, I noticed that the floods had altered the river-bed gravel somewhat. Trotting again, I took 19 grayling for the day (including one of 15 inches, but the general size was much smaller than the Irfon fish of the previous visit) plus a couple of decent chub for good measure. Again, the fish were hard on the bottom and it was necessary to set the float so that the bait tripped along the gravel. I didn’t see a rise all day. The snow never let up, and at lunchtime, proprietor Jeremy Jaquet was kind enough to light the stove in the fishing hut and we had a chat while the steam rose off my waders. (Down by the river, talking fishing in our hut, we were avoiding chaos on the roads, and at the end of the day I had to drive home via Brecon as the pass on the A479 was blocked by snow). Pwll y Faedda Lodge, built in the 1920s, was once part of the the Glanusk estate, and it was interesting to think back to the days of the Crawshays and Baileys: millionaires who owned a sizable slice of the South Wales and Forest of Dean coal and steel industry, and who had exclusive rights to the pick of the Wye and Usk fishing. Now the same can be yours for a time, whether for salmon, trout or grayling, for the sake of a phone call and a modest day ticket fee, all courtesy of the Wye-Usk Foundation!
Oliver Burch