I have read and enjoyed Daniel Price's blog for a while now and was pleased when he recently sent us an article. I think many of us know how he felt about having a home river he just couldn't fish.
The river gauge on my home water lets me know that the fortnight long flood is still a long way from receding; the rain we waited months for now will not stop. It is hard to be upset though, the spate will leave a fresh river and feeding fish in its wake. But what to do now? Bulging boxes show yet another weekend of fly tying is definitely not needed and a stillwater cannot scratch that flowing liquid itch. I am sure that all of us fishermen become a little mad when removed from the water for too long, when cabin fever is rising sometimes you just need to get out fishing come hell or high water. A phone call to my fishing buddy Nick proved he was of a similar mind-set and we therefore hatched a plan for a weekend of escaping high water and chasing some ladies (of the grayling variety of course).
No heavy rain was forecast for the weekend itself so we were confident in finding some fishing on a freestone tributary on the Sunday, once the levels had a few extra hours to drop. However waiting that long was not an option, we needed our fix. As such Saturday saw me driving 120 miles eastwards towards Andover to fish a chalkstream. Thank the gods for chalkstreams; it takes rain of biblical proportions to put them in an unfishable flood.
The Dever was slightly coloured but sight fishing was still possible in the shallower sections. A few olives took to the air throughout the day but not in enough numbers for anything but an infrequent riser to take interest; blind nymphing would be the order of the day.
The conditions saw us both rigging up with similar setups, 10’ rods in the 2-3wt range with long French leaders and a few feet of tippet on to a coloured mono indicator. Initially a pair of my normal chalkstream nymphs was attached to my leader, small hare’s ears and pheasant tails in the 16-20 size range, but it soon became apparent these fish were not as pressured as others I have encountered on the chalk and they would move for a meatier flashier mouthful.
We led the flies through the many depressions and deep holes in which we could only just make out the bottom with very little to show for our efforts. It was not until an hour or so in to my day, on the crease of a deep eddy, that I encountered my first ever Dever grayling. The river was pushing hard against the outside of a bend, scouring the bank and creating a deep slack which simply had to hold a grayling. A gold beaded hare’s ear was flicked upstream and worked along the crease when a slight hesitation in the coloured mono instinctively caused me to lift. Immediately a feeling of decent weight and the tell-tale twisting fight let me know a good grayling was attached to my line. The fight of a grayling in more placid water is not often spectacular but their beauty and willingness to take a fly makes them a lovely fish to catch and my preferred winter fix. Thankfully the jig hook held and my first fish turned out be our best of the day at somewhere around the pound and a half mark. The beautiful male fish posed with his dorsal fin held high and was admired briefly before slipping back down in to his hole on the bend, with the duck broken confidence increased and fish started to come more regularly.
The pattern for the day seemed to be stretches of river apparently devoid of grayling interspersed with bursts of action as we found a small shoal. The exceptions of course were the larger specimens which tend to be more solitary, although a few were seen clearer water was really needed to stalk them effectively and their presence was normally noticed as they bolted from us. Deeper sections on bends and around weirs and hatch pools held the majority of the grayling and our nymph rigs were twitched through most areas where the bottom was not easily seen. Often our red tags and flashback hare’s ears would be intercepted by decent grayling and the subsequent twitches and pauses of our indicators lead to a fine day’s sport.
Nick gave me a right thrashing in terms of grayling numbers on this particular day, the man can be a grayling magnet, with the only real difference in our styles being he was fishing the nymphs more actively. The importance of the induced take has now been noted and is something I will be working on this grayling season. I finished respectfully however with around a dozen to Nick’s 30 odd (neither of us really keep count) and thankfully we managed for the most part to avoid the trout which were easily spotted cutting their redds.
A few cheeky stouts (Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde mild is highly recommended) and a good night’s sleep left us ready to tackle a very different river the following day. We travelled from Cardiff to the very heart of Wales, crossing many fantastic rivers on the way; the road followed the Taff valley, and then crossed the Usk before heading over some stunning mountains to the Wye. These large rivers were swollen but clearing, if we had anchors for feet we could have fished them but we opted for the safer option and carried on upstream. Our destination was high up a tributary of the Wye, the Irfon. Here the river drains less surface area and the flows are more manageable than on the main river and we hope to find good conditions. Sunday would in some respects be the polar opposite of chalkstream fishing. The pools and runs were seriously deep and powerful, just like the grayling that inhabit them and fish were not present in huge numbers. Previous experience on this river had shown us however that the average size of the grayling is spectacular and if we could find a couple it would be an exercise in quality over quantity.
We fished the water methodically and hard, again leader to hand methods were the weapons of choice but this time there was no place for delicacy. 4mm tungsten beaded flies with lead underbodies were the norm in all but the more placid pools, with flash and fluorescent tags providing an important trigger in the coloured water. Jig and grub hooks ensured that the flies fished point up and because the flood had cleared most of the debris flies could be bounced along the bottom without snagging too often. I suppose you would call it Czech nymphing but to be honest all of these methods seem to merge in to one throughout a day’s fishing as range and weight are altered for the particular pool in question. The sheer volume of flow dictated we wade downstream and cover large runs quickly in the hunt for those elusive large grayling. Hip deep runs of a hundred yards or more were worked down and we made sure all the water was covered, working as a pair to fish every depression and behind every tree. The grayling were simply not playing ball and by lunch we had both just a single modest fish on the books.
A discussion over a cup of coffee and a hot cross bun had us scratching our heads. We decided the grayling may not have moved back in to the runs yet as only two days ago they would have seen an extra foot of water and a pace that would have excited a white water kayaker. We decided to search for deeper eddies and slacks where grayling may have headed to avoid the flood and would hopefully still be holding.
A brisk walk downstream saw us at the very head of a small pool where gravel bars had created a slack in the very centre and a deep eddy along one side. I am a relatively lazy man and was content to laze on the bank in the sunshine whilst Nick tackled the wading across the surging currents to reach the slack. His indicator stopped almost on the first cast and an airborne fish revealed itself rather to spotty to be a grayling, a couple of casts later and the pattern repeated itself. We were not after trout and there were obviously good numbers here so it was time for a hike upstream.
Apparently Welsh farmers love barbed wire and our walk was lengthened considerably by avoiding it, we had both lost too many waders to leaks recently to risk climbing over. Many deep holes and pools were fished on the way upstream for exactly zero piscatorial reward but the day was beautiful, sunny and crisp, and there was nowhere I would rather have been. One particular pool gave us a quick reminder of the dangers of bedrock and coloured water. Nymphing on a bend Nick suddenly dropped as one foot stepped from a ledge and in to nothing, the sheer drop was hidden by the coloured water. Thankfully one foot still firmly planted and a wading staff was enough to prevent a dangerous situation but we were certainly a bit more cautious after.
By the time we had fished through this pool the day was drawing to a close and we would soon be out of light now the clocks have gone back. With two modest grayling to show for our efforts it had been a hard day’s fishing but rewarding none the less, beautiful countryside and warm sun always seem to make a good day. I do not think it is in any angler’s nature to pass up walking around one more corner and fishing one more pool however so we could not resist the trip a little further upstream. At the top of a long riffle the river narrows drastically and the water appears black, deep and about walking pace, perfect. Two very heavy flies are tied on to the leader and we decide how to split the pool between us. Nick jumps in halfway down to fish the lower end of the run and I fish right at the head. A strong funnel of water goes straight down the centre of the river here, almost certainly too strong for fish to hold in it, but the water each side is calm and deep and looks very inviting.
Before I have even got in to position Nick is calling and he has a decent grayling on, the curve in his rod lets me know it is a darned sight less modest than our earlier prizes. I manage to struggle back across the current in time to photograph the fish for him, at an ounce below the magic 2lb mark it is a beauty. Back at the head of the run again it is now surely my turn for an encounter with a lovely Welsh lady. My heavy nymphs tracked along the edge of the fast water with a good dead drift and were met with a thump as the indicator completely stopped in its tracks. As I tightened on the fish it took off upstream and stripped a couple of yards of line from the reel. This had me fooled in to thinking it was a large trout but a flash of silver revealed a lump of a grayling deep in the pool. These freestone fish grow up in strong currents and are deep and fit, whether they truly are stronger fish or just have more flow to use the result is a much stronger fight than I have had from a chalkstream grayling. An agonising few minutes saw the fish time and time again boring down deep in to the flow and every time it turned I imagined the hook pulling from its mouth. Finally Nick managed to slide the net under my prize. At 2lbs 2oz it is my biggest Welsh grayling to date and I write this with a smile on my face thinking about it.
In the end we had a very memorable weekend’s fishing despite our local rivers being blown out by heavy rain. If you are prepared to travel you can normally find fishable water in the headlands of the river systems or on a chalk or limestone. I suppose it just depends on how far along your particular case of cabin fever has progressed before the pressure gets too much and you just have to bite that bullet and take a chance. I know I can already feel the madness creeping in again now faced with another fortnight without being able to fish.
Read more from Daniel HERE