Fishtec and Airflo online marketing manager Ceri Thomas visits a beautiful natural brown trout reservoir in deepest West Wales
I love visiting a new venue - there are so many things to discover and work out. Especially one holding wild brown trout. As luck would have it, I recently spent a week in the Preseli hills of Pembrokeshire just yards away from the banks of a lake I had never fished before - this lake was Rosebush reservoir.
Rosebush reservoir looked like your typical upland lake - steep sided, clear, probably acidic water. With rolling hills rising on all sides the location was idyllic. And it was my view from the holiday cottage window!
There was scant information about Rosebush reservoir available online. Other than it held wild brown trout only. So I took a visit to Llys-y-fran visitor centre and bought two post dated day tickets at £11.50 each. This really was an unknown fishery to me; I had no idea what to expect.... all part of the fun when trying a new place.
Now the weather had been glorious that Whitsun week. Perfect for a family holiday, in fact you could not have asked for better- glorious sunshine all day, with a nice breeze to keep things fresh. Conditions that are pretty dire for fishing, let alone brown trout!
Whilst enjoying a cold beer in the garden I observed somebody drifting in a boat in the bright sun and brisk breeze. He is going to struggle I thought. By early evening he was packing up - wrong move. That is when I decided to fish; day time angling in these conditions just isn't worth considering, from experience brown trout come alive in late evening after a hot day.
So, I donned my waders at 7.30 pm and walked down to the reservoir, all of 400 yards away! That first evening I aimed for the north shore, which from the cottage looked shallower and most fishable. I had to go through a fence, over some rough ground, dodge brambles and bog hop, but finally got down to the edge. Water was gin clear with abundant quillwort weed typical of upland lakes carpeting the bottom. I saw a rise that looked like it was from a tiny fish. Wading was OK, although there was a lot of soft sucking mud and floating weed to contend with. I got the impression that this part of the lake was rarely, if ever, fished. I started working the margins with floating line, intermediate poly-leader and two flies, one a red tag and the other a small black cormorant.
Back casting was restricted in places, but as is usual in lakes like this the fish are never as far out as you think. It took a while, but I finally got my first fish. A tiddler to be honest, barely able to take the fly! I had a LOT of sharp pulls and missed fish - it was still bright, and the fish proved pretty shy at first. It did come on eventually, and more than half a dozen came to came to hand that evening, best one must have been 10 inches or so. Not a bad result and each fish was a perfect wild specimen.
My second visit was a day time session a few days later. The weather had stayed fine all week, but fortunately for me today there was a little more cloud cover than recent days, so I decided to make the most of the overcast conditions. I walked down to the lake via a much easier route this time. The cloud broke up, and the sun came through pretty much as soon as I rigged up my rod! I decided to look for deeper water, due to the bright conditions. Starting by a little cabin near some boats, I worked down the steep east side, step and casting my way along the shore with my 9 foot 5 weight rod. I had over-lined the rod with an Airflo Super-dri Xceed 6 weight, in order to cope better with the steep sides. To get down fast, rather than use a sinking fly line I tied on a woolly bugger on the point. This one was fitted with a 3.8 mm tungsten bead, so would plummet down through the water column very quickly.
With such a steep bank behind me I had to steeple cast, and could get no more than six or seven yards out. This was more than enough distance though, and after letting the fly sink to a count of 10 into deep water, the takes started to come as soon as the fly started moving on the retrieve. A fair number of fish came to hand, and they fought well above their weight - I was surprised when what felt like a steel spring on the end of the line turned out to be a feisty 11 incher! I also bumped and lost a lot of fish, most of them either on the drop or first few pulls.
Unfortunately I ran out of bank space and therefore fresh fish to cover on this side of the lake. So, I decided to head over to the west bank, which looked like it was pretty fishable from a distance, despite the very steep sides. Getting there was a different story, I headed over the dam and up and over the far bank. It was atrocious to be fair, I had to vault over a few gates, negotiate gorse bushes, brambles, rhododendrons and fallen pine timber - literally everything conspired to tear my waders to bits and trip me over! Somehow I got near the top corner of the lake with waders intact. With the wind blowing over my right to left shoulder to make things awkward, and a steep bank blocking the back cast it was challenging to say the least...
Shuffling and stumbling on a narrow strip of gravel and rock I was just able to put the fly into the deep black water a few yards out. I buried the fly in my back a few times, and the brambles behind had me bursting out a torrent of swear words at times. Thankfully negotiating the assault course was worth it - the fish did come, whenever I covered new ground, or when the clouds covered the sun for a few minutes! I ended up with 10 or so up to 12 inches, each one fighting well above their weight, plus at least as many sharp pulls and fish lost. The biggest fish of the day spat out a small fish as it swam back - proof they don't just feed on insects.
It was a lovely location to be fair, a true gem of a water, wild and rugged as they come. Definitely worth a visit if you like wild fish in wild places. What I enjoyed most was the reward after putting in some serious leg work - It certainly justified a bottle of wine that evening whilst admiring the view!
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