Easter Highs & Lows 11/4/09-19/4/09

Just returned from a 9 day break in Builth Wells & managed to fit in a few outings on the nearby rivers. The first couple of days was tough going with the wind blowing hard downstream making presentation a real problem.

The initial trips to the Wye (3-4 hour sessions) resulted in a best catch of 6 fish including a couple of 11"+ Grayling. The Grannom hatch on the Sunday was one of the best I'd personally witnessed with flies so dense I had to be careful not to leave my mouth open for too long...... although this did very little to entice the fish to rise.

On the Tuesday I'd made up my mind to try out a river I'd not fished before - The Llynfi Dulas...one of the most productive of the Wye & Usk Foundation voucher beats (R19) in 2008.

Arriving at around 8.30am and making my way down the steep slope to the beat start, the river looked just like what I'd expected but with no recent rain was low and clear. I set out upstream, but with the sun blazing it soon became apparent things were going to be tough. After 1 hour I hooked my first and only trout (10") which took the GRHE nymph. Little in the way of hatches to talk about and no fish rising throughout the session.

There is no doubt this stretch holds a load of fish, as I walked back down the river to return to the car I spooked a number of trout out of the nearside bank, one or two fish I estimated at well over 12". So I shall be returning back here when I deem the conditions to be right to redress the balance in my favour without any excuses!.

I also managed a walk along the W&UF's Upper Irfon beat which runs north of Llanwrtyd Wells. Parking at St David's Church I walked the the length upstream of the road bridge and from what I saw this is real wild river fishing, I will be looking to return armed with my 7' rod to see what the water holds.....pictures below.

After a couple a brief sessions on the lower Irfon - resulting in a couple of small brownies - I headed back down to the Wye on Thursday, the wind had changed to a brisk upstream direction and the sky was brewing up for a storm. I couldn't wait to get fishing and with the wind in my favour opted to fish upstream with a Klink and Dink.

I didn't have to wait too long for the first fish and the 4 hours that I fished resulted in 10 trout, more importantly 2 of the trout were 16" + 17"+ long which are some of the largest I've ever caught out of a river, they were really meaty fish and I can only imagine they had gorged themselves on the vast Grannom that had been hatching all week.

The lows of the week came when I decided to have a round of golf on Friday which was a soggy affair to say the least, then later in the evening I thought I'd have a look at some of the photos I'd taken of the large trout I'd caught the day before only to find that the entire weeks photos had been deleted from the memory card!!!!!

I'd rather not go into details as to how this may have happened but to say I was gutted would be an understatement. I did manage one more go on Sunday which produced 8 fish and after taking a few photos keep the camera close to me until having a chance to upload them.

PS. As always all fish handled carefully and returned.