Autumn Grayling Fishing

When the leaves on the trees start to turn red & gold and the temperatures are telling you that going fishing will require some kind of thermal protection...something stirs within a lot of fly fisherman...the realisation that now is the time that the fly box with the heavy nymphs gets moved into the front pocket of the fishing vest.

I truly love this time of year and when conditions are right then great sport can be had as was this case this weekend.

Fishing two very different rivers but both with there own appeal the target fish was obviously the beautiful Grayling which are only too welcome to oblige this time of year (once you have located them).

Saturday was an early start and I had the company of Paul who runs the Sea Trout Fishing website & Sea Trout Forum and certainly knows how to catch a Grayling or two. On this day we caught many...with some real beauties for such a small river.

Sunday I was back on the River Irfon in Mid-Wales where the Grayling are much harder to find and tightly shoaled but when found you can normally take a few fish from the same spot without moving and can be very big.

Many 'out of season' trout also willing to take the bugs.

As the weeks go on and the temperature drops further then I'm sure the Grayling will only be too happy to provide the more hardy amongst us with some cracking sport...I for one have got the thermals and fleeces all ready to go.

Cluns Alien Invaders!

Last Saturday myself and two others decided that a trip to the River Clun in Shropshire was in order so we headed towards the upper reaches where the river thins out a bit but previous experience told us that there were still plenty of good sized grayling along with the trout to be caught from the deeper pockets of water.

After our arrival at 7.30am we spread out along the 2 mile stretch and began fishing. The river was low and relatively clear and with the bright conditions the fish were going to be very nervous so stealth was a must to get the best out of the water.

The first decent pool I came to saw a couple of brownies come to hand taken on a small tungsten head pheasant tail nymph fished beneath a klinkhamer, then a little while later a couple more, nothing big but the trout on the Clun can weigh a fair bit more than trout caught on a lot of other waters due to the abundance of food available to them.

My journey upstream saw me under attack from a bombardment of missiles fired from the 'over-ripe' Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens Glandulifera) pods which stretch along most of this river bank, when these things go off it makes you glad you put your Polaroids on. Since its introduction into the UK from Asia during the late 1930's and its escape later in the 50's into the British countryside the spread has been phenomenal with few rivers escaping the invasion.

A switch to one of my favourite grayling bugs fished with a fair bit of weight in the deeper glides started to produce a few decent fish, the grayling along this river are a real eye opener...its hard to imagine where they all hide but I'm convinced that some of the deeper depressions in the riverbed can hold a substantial amount of fish and if they are not spooked then catching 2 or 3 from one spot is always on the cards.

Below: possibly the darkest trout I've ever caught.

Taken from right below a wall which is permanently in the shade.

Although there was plenty of flies coming off the water (mainly Stoneflies) the surface activity seemed restricted to the smaller specimens resulting in rather futile splashes at anything that was chucked at them.

Between the three of us we ended with a total of 44 fish with the majority of them being grayling, so under the conditions we all left happy and looking forward to our imminent return...hopefully when the Himalayan Balsam has died of a bit!

Wind Of Change

I have noticed within the last couple of weeks that there is a significant swing in favour of Grayling in my catches. Generally most of the water I fish has a good head of Grayling in them but early to mid season catches have always been dominated by Brown Trout.



Last weekends four fishing outings (long weekend!) on both the Wye and Lugg are a prime example with the Grayling out-numbering the Trout by roughly 2 to 1. That included two trips with catches in excess of 20 fish.

The reason is obviously down to the amount of Grayling in the water to start with, combined with the fact that August is notoriously a difficult month to catch Trout with very little fly life coming off the water the trout are quite content to sit back a rest a little after their over indulgent gorging on the prolific early summer fly hatches.

The other notable thing is the quality of the fish I've caught recently, with many Grayling over the 14" mark...particularly on the river Lugg.

Its hard to believe that this beautiful fish was persecuted on some waters in the past in order to try and maintain a 'trout only' fishery when the Grayling offers (in my opinion) an equal if not sometimes more enjoyable quarry as the Brown Trout.

The other big bonus is that this hard fighting fish allows the more hardy of us to fly fish through the winter months on rivers where they are present increasing our season to a full 12 months...All hail the mighty Thymallus thymallus!!!

Grayling On The River Ithon

With all the recent rain it was difficult to find anywhere to fish over the weekend. With the Irfon & Wye both out of sorts my first choice was the River Edw but when I got there the river was pushing through hard and this river can be difficult wading at the best of times, so I headed for the River Ithon about 10 miles away.

Looking over the bridge when I arrived I could see that the river was quite high with a fair bit of colour still in it...perfect!!!



Having fished this river many times I have found this tributary to the Wye fishes best in just these conditions so I tackled up and set off down river. Trout came immediately to spider & nymph patterns and a later switch to some heavy bug patterns in some noted grayling area produced instant results.



It turned out to be a very memorable days fishing in terms of quality with 4 of my 10 Grayling measuring over 15" and many trout up to 10" to fill in the gaps.

When this river is low it can be hard to find any fish and you can end up with a very frustrating day, but choose the right day and you can come away with a big smile on your face.

I also squeezed in a couple more outings...one on the river Irfon (still very high but running clear) & another on a very picturesque stillwater near Rhayader called Llyngwyn where you can always spot Red Kites flying overhead.



The Irfon was still pushing hard but had cleared adequately to produce a few Trout & Grayling to shortlined nymph methods and being out on a boat at Llyngwyn is just a delightful place to spend a few hours...catching some Rainbows is just a bonus.

Parr For The Course

A quick visit to The Wye on Saturday evening highlighted to me that this/last years fry have fared pretty well in managing to survive to get to the Parr stage with huge numbers splashing around on the Builth Wells town waters.

This is almost certainly due to the relatively low river conditions during their growth period without the loss normally associated with the numerous winter spates that the Wye has encountered in previous years.

The Parr were certainly difficult to avoid when fishing but a change from a nymph to a 'Elk Hair Caddis' dry fly attracted a number of Grayling, nothing huge but plenty of fun all the same.

Earlier on in the day I undertook a little 'Kick Sampling' of the rivers - Irfon, Wye & Edw with mixed results.

The entomology of the local rivers is something that I have recently become more interested in and at the moment I am definitely at the 'learner' stage but understanding what crawls under your feet while fishing can be very informative to your fly choice.

My initial findings show the Edw and Wye to be in pretty good health as far as invertebrate life but the Irfon I feel is certainly lacking in a few of the common species with no Freshwater Shrimps (Gammarus) found at all.

I will endeavour to maintain a regular sampling of these rivers in the future.

Fun On The Clun

I took my first ever trip to the River Clun in Shropshire on Tuesday afternoon as a guest, this particular stretch is very secluded and seemingly miles from anywhere.

We approached the river quietly where we were immediately greeted by many trout breaking the surface to feed. I started on the dry fly and put on quite a large sized klinkhamer (#14 Partridge 15BNX extreme hook) as many of the flies coming off were Mayflies & Large Olives. This brought instant results taking and losing both Trout and Grayling from the off.

To say it was 'challenging' fishing would be somewhat an understatement, the River Clun is like an assault course in places with fallen trees, deep pools, steep banks and casting is mostly in the form of a roll cast (many times crawling on your knees) but in some ways that all adds to the fun and trying to catch a wary Trout in these conditions is a real thrill.

We ended the day well past 10.00pm with a tally of 50+ fish between us both, mostly Trout but with a good percentage of Grayling, caught on both dry and nymphs.

The food supply on this river is plentiful and the fish are very plump and fit as a result and eager to put up a good scrap.

My next visit to this river cannot come soon enough.

Spiders Score On The Wye

Quite often you get to the river not really knowing what to expect, other times it turns out completely different from what you thought...this was was of those weekends.

I decided that this weekend my club waters on the upper River Wye was to play host for my fly fishing. I got to the river around 11.00am on Saturday and I had planned to experiment with a short line - upstream spider set up. When I got to the river the wind direction/strength put paid to any method fished upstream so I settled for fishing a team of spiders across and down, trying to maintain as much 'dead drift' as possible.

Fish came instantly and it was obvious from the start that something had triggered these fish into feeding mode.

Although the river was low I targeted the deeper waters that still maintained plenty of flow and the fish were queuing up to be first to my spiders.

I found that the favoured fly was a bead head Greenwells pattern so I added another in place of the Snipe & Purple which out the three was the least productive. This resulted in an occurrence that I can only remember happening once before and today it happened four times...that being the catching of 2 fish at the same time!

At the conclusion of the day (7.30pm)I had taken fish mostly on spiders but also later on the dry fly and nymph with a good number of hard fighting Grayling making up the numbers (biggest 14").

Sundays session (3 hours) saw the river in much the same mode but the wind strength was considerably less enabling me to fish upstream as I had planned the day before, taking many fish again. This is a fantastic way of fishing enabling you to search out lots of water very quickly and catching fish right under your feet.

A valuable lesson was further instilled in me that if you're not in the water then you're not gonna catch anything, what looked like being a hard river turned out to produce one of my most memorable weekends on the river bank.