Ceri Thomas has a fish he wants to tick of his "must catch" list. Does he do it? Read on:
Brook trout are one of my favourite species. Despite their oft diminutive size they truly are jewels of the aquatic world, colourful and so full of character. Words cannot really describe the love I have for brookies and sadly there are simply not enough of them in the UK for my liking.
In my fishing life I’ve been lucky enough to have caught plenty of stunning little book trout on my many visits to Wisconsin; their native area. Over here a few of their stocked brothers have graced my net - but those farm bred fish have never really done it for me like their wild brethren.
Catching a wild UK Fontinalis has been on my fishing bucket list for some time now, but locating and finding such a population has proven very tough. They simply don’t seem to exist....
Where I live in Wales it is probably quite a good place to find them. Remote mountain lakes, which may have been stocked at some point. I know for a fact brook trout were stocked in the Teifi pools and the Aberystwyth complex of lakes in the 1970s, a time when acid rain was causing water quality issues and the highly acid tolerant brook trout was seen as a solution by some angling clubs.
In one of these lakes the brook charr actually took hold, and established a breeding population. This was Llyn Blaenmelindwr in the Cambrian hills. Part of the Aberystwyth AA group it became fairly well known for its wild self sustaining population.
I never caught one there, but witnessed one captured on a day of persistent drizzle and fog, only about 6 inches long, but definitely a home grown, fin-perfect wild bred brook trout. This was in the mid 1990s.
At the time the lake was seriously acidified by a huge conifer plantation that surrounded it. Brookies are far more tolerant of low PH water than browns, so they perhaps thrived in this Llyn where the browns could not. The conifers were cut down many years ago, and the water chemistry changed rapidly. As a result brown trout from a neighbouring lake that was connected by a stream inflow found they could breed successfully and colonise. Their population rapidly exploded, and I guess pushed the brook trout to extinction by way of completion for food and spawning areas. Over the years I fished the lake many times in the hope of seeing another one, but the brookies were gone.
There were however other places that I had set my thoughts on. Remote lakes deeper and higher in the Welsh mountains. Several potential waters are mentioned in my bible for the high Llyns, Frank Ward’s Lakes of Wales.
I have a great love of this book, and harbour a big respect for the author himself who catalogued and recorded the fishing in every natural lake in Wales, no matter how remote, way back in the 1930s. Species present, altitude, flies to use, average size of fish - it is all there and little has changed today in most cases.
Ward mentions several lakes holding the mythical Salmo Fontinalis – no relics of the 1970s stocking experiments, but probable introductions from Victorian times; pure wild strain brook trout undiluted by fish farming.
So, for a few seasons now I have been meaning to give one of these remote places a visit, to complete my quest and catch a UK wild strain brook charr. Dependant of course on if such fish even still existed and thrived in such places. This spring I decided enough was enough, it simply had to be done.
One evening in late April the final plans were laid and the day allocated to the adventure was on hand. The car was packed with a 10 foot 6 weight Airflo fly rod with a float tube amongst the kit. A long drive into the wilderness to the far north lay ahead in the morning, with a further challenge of a lengthy tramp over bleak moors and crags fully laden with the gear. A quest that would be well worth it if the prize was to be found. I didn’t sleep that well that night, such was the excitement.
Day break came, and I collected a fishing buddy en-route who shared the same ambition. Between us, surely we would find one of these mystical lakes and land the brookies - returning to civilisation with the pictures to prove their existence.
We reached the mountainous region in good time and began our hike into the wilderness, our float tubes and fly rods strapped to our backs. After cresting another hill, doubting ourselves that the lake even existed we finally got our first glimpse of the llyn. It looked magnificent, pretty as a picture in a high basin with not a tree to be seen. Sizeable too, maybe 12 or 15 acres.
The early morning weather was calm, fairly cloudy and a hatch of buzzer was in full swing. The lake looked perfect, yet despite the fly life not a rise was to be seen. Pond olives sailed past on the light breeze like miniature sail boats, yet no fish rose to take them. Odd, we thought. If there were trout here surely they would be feeding?
Nevertheless the float tubes were inflated, rods rigged, suitable flies attached and the fishing began. The end of the lake we launched from turned out to be shallow, very shallow in fact – just a foot or two at the most and clogged with deep peaty muck. For hundreds of yards out it simply wasn’t fishable. We finally pushed through this stuff into deeper water where my fins didn’t kick up great clouds of silt.
A few casts were made whilst I soaked up the atmosphere and silence of this remote place. Fishing from a float tube is simply the best way to enjoy a mountain lake, you truly are at one with nature. For a long while I fished, with nothing at all. No sign of fish life, not a sniff.
Thoughts began to creep in that perhaps the lake was devoid of fish, that the brook trout had finally died out having succumbed to predation, poaching or that their spawning grounds had eventually silted up over the years.
I changed my point fly over to a leech imitation with a 3mm red tungsten bead; something I hoped would get down a bit deeper and show up in the peaty water, since where I was now located seemed to be the deepest hole in the lake. Slowly I drifted and kept in touch with the flies, yet nothing took hold. I was at the point of shouting over to my companion that the place was empty, when a sudden jolt pulled on the line – a fish! I lifted the rod and was instantly connected; the fish bored deep then came to the top and splashed. A brookie I yelled! Finally a home grown fish was in my grasp. A few pics and she was back to the deeps, no monster but maybe 11 inches of beautiful hen brook charr.
Now the method was established we began to catch fish – not in vast numbers but more than enough to satisfy. The key was to allow the flies to sink right down to the bottom in the open water. When the takes came they were solid, no nonsense affairs. The fish fought well for their size, dogged head shakers each one.
We landed most, but missed and lost a few. Unlike the wild brown trout we were so accustomed to, these dour fish hunkered down deep in the water column away from shore line features and drop offs. Where one was caught you might get another in quick succession, then nothing until you covered a new area further down the lake.
Between us we captured a fair number of brookies ranging from 9 to 13 inches, including a couple of stunning cock fish with unbelievably vivid markings. Truly wild fishing in a wild place.
After a few hours our sport was done – we could have slogged it out for more, but another sheet of water was on the agenda for the afternoon (a story for another time). The quest was complete and from the llyn we departed, with but memories of the stunning and unique Fontinalis captured firmly in our minds.
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