Back In The Land Of The Grayling

It's been a while since my last post and the last couple of months must rate as one of the most frustrating periods I can remember. I rely mostly on the weekend to get out fishing and for most of that couple of months the rain seems to  have always arrived at exactly the wrong time to flood the rivers for the weekend.

Well as I write this the sun is blazing and temperatures are well up to mid twenties so I'm hoping we are into a settled spell which will allow rivers to run a bit closer to normal for this time of year.

I took full advantage on Sunday when the rivers began to fall and myself and fishing buddy Nick headed off to the River Ithon (major upper tributary to the Wye). It was still running quite high and carrying a fair bit of colour but looked fishable when we got to the river.

Due to the adverse weather of late the water temperatures have remained low and as a result seeing any fish rising is a rare occurrence...such was today and the plan of action was an out and out nymph attack, something on par to what we would normally be doing in the depths of winter!

We soon located some nice Grayling and were both getting some pretty hefty bends in the rods, they were definitely favouring the faster/streamer water of around 2-3 foot deep and seemed to be well anchored to the bottom.


Nick's 10' #2 almost bend double with a large Grayling!

47cm hard fighting Grayling for Nick.

Although we had connected with a few trout it was a day for Grayling and plenty of them, the water level and colour had obviously instilled them with a feeling of safety and a willingness to feed.

One of a few brown trout caught on the day

I switched flies a few times during the day but I found that heavily weighted (tungsten beadhead) nymphs in the #12-#14 sizes worked best.

This current spell of warmer weather should now bring the water temperatures back up and induce more surface activity and the dry fly box may soon be re-opened!