Feedback & Reports

Three inches on the Ddoll Farm guage but what a difference a day can make to fish behaviour. Compared with yesterday just upstream at Dolgau, we had to put up with incessant bright sun plus a strong downstream wind for most of the day. Even before the wind got up though, the fish weren't as obliging as yesterday, but the wind killed it for sure for most of the day. Some midges were around from the off, a few olives during the day and sedges as usual, but by and large not too many rising fish, and those which didn't rise seemed not too keen to do so either! In spite of this we managed to catch fish on hare's ear and olive emergers and Duck's Duns, Grayling Steel Blue, Elk Hair Caddis and just one on a PTN. Most of the grayling were around 12" with a couple just a tad bigger. Very hard work for sure but not a bad result given the conditions. We tried all sorts of water and found fish in most and seemed to be most successful where there was some shade. Sight of the day for sure was Glyn seeing a large common carp towards the bottom of the beat. Cormorants around as they were yesterday.

2 Trout, 28 Grayling

Lovely Day on Craig Llyn. Started at the lower limit where I met the new owner. Nice to see someone who clearly will take care of the place. New styles and benches in place and bank clearances made to make life easier. My thanks to him for still allowing the WUF to use the beat, it's a personal favourite of mine.
The river still has the peaty tinge it has had for a few weeks, and the water temperature seemed cold for this time of the year, can only assume the dams have released some water. Level pretty low though.
No fish from the bottom section, which is normally such a good spot but picked up 4 four grayling in the pool below the island, all around 10-12 inches.
Moved upstream and waded right through the stretch up to the channel with limited success, only a couple of small fish in the pocket water. That was until I got to the section directly below the channel, where a lovely grayling measuring 19 inches took a weighted nymph in a foot of water and took off downstream. Took over 10 minutes to get in the net.
The channel, which is not somewhere I have had a lot of success before, also fished well, took 6 fish mainly from fish coming from depth to take my dry fly, and a couple on deep fished nymphs. The top section was a bit slow and the fish all seemed to be in broken water, where a took a few more up to 16 inches.
Lovely day in a lovely place!

2 Trout, 13 Grayling

Had a superb day on this beat. The river was low and the weather was warm but overcast. Because of the depths of the pools on this beat the low flows do not make to much difference and if anything makes it easier to reach them harder runs at the back of the pools. Fished with an 8ft 3 weight for maximum fun. Caught most fish in the top 1 foot of water drifting home tied black and olive spiders which I was testing for a trip to the river Wharfe in September. Also had a few straight off the top on klinkerhammers. Wanted to pick up a few more bigger trout but the grayling were getting there first. All the grayling were around 10-15 inches and the few trout I had were a bit smaller. Most of the fish I caught were from Ash Tree pool which seems to be stacked with grayling. I must have fished that pool for about 4 hours straight and the bites and rises still hadn't dried up when I finally decided to get out and have a walk further down. Came back later that day and caught a few more before I went home. All in all another brilliant day here and I will be returning for some winter grayling in the new year.

4 Trout, 27 Grayling

This has to be the most beautiful river I have ever seen. The flow was very good, and wading a bit tricky, but of the entire beat, I think I only fished 400 yds. I started downstream of the caravan park. The day was overcast, with a little wind and very light spat of drizzle. I caught fish between 12 and 16 inches beside the browns that were around 7 or 8 inches. Browns were sitting at the tails of the main flow and the Grayling at the head just after the riffle. I have never caught Grayling before so I had such a treat. Hatches happening the whole day and I fished brown, dun and tan parachutes on 6x. Most of the fish took the dry but a few on HE nymph and black emerges. This river is worth travelling 10,000km for, no question.

2 Trout, 24 Grayling

What an amazing place to fish. I had a grayling close to 3lb, a personal best, klink and dink. This is a beautiful stretch of river with a very good head of fish. I also had a lovely brown trout of about 2lb on a tiny dry grey klinkhammer size 18. I fished as a guest of Shaun Watkins, who was kind enough to let me fish this superb stretch, which has a lovely caravan park within 5 minutes of the river.

5 Trout, 15 Grayling

It has been my first time fishing in a welsh river. Great place for the landscape around. The day was sunny. I fished from 11 AM to 4 PM predominantly dry fly. The water was veiled probably because of the rain the day before. I caught and released a brown trout with an imitation in CDC. I had some refuse. The next time will be better. Greetings to all the fishermen of Wales.

1 Trout

River clear and fast. Heavy rain in the afternoon and evening. 3 x BT to 16", 10 x Grayling to 13". Flies size 16 and 18 CDC Quill Size 16 JIG PTN. 2.8 Tungsten Bead

3 Trout, 10 Grayling

A Curate's Egg of a day. The good? 4 of the Trout I caught were 1lb plus; with the best two going all of 3lbs a piece. So surprised was I to catch fish of this stature that I contacted Oliver Burch to check if anyone was stocking the river - and was gratified to be assured that they were almost certainly wild fish.
The bad? Having to turn two teenage girls, armed with spinning rods, off the water. The girls came down from the Caravan Park, within 30 minutes of my arrival, and proceeded to chuck spinners into the Lower Craig Lyn Pool. I must admit, I felt a bit like Scrooge telling them that they could not fish. However, having dragged myself out of a warm bed at 5:00am, and driven the best part of 100 miles to be there, I was not going to allow my day to be spoiled by anyone going down river in front of me with spinning rods. Their father (at least I assume it was their father) came down shortly afterwards. He opened with the standard "I did not know it was private" gambit and then said that he had been told that he could fish by "the bloke who is always fishing here". He then went on to tell me about the nice trout (plural) that he had caught from the Lower Craig Lyn the night before. Neither upstream nymphing nor catch and release featured in his repertoire (ditto, I suspect, reference "the bloke who is always here"). As if that was bad enough, there were two other fly fishermen on the beat. I did not get close enough to either of them to establish their bona fides (or otherwise).
Other than that, not a bad day. Unless you fish rivers like the Test (when you will almost certainly be catching stocked fish), it is not every day that you catch a brace of 3lb browns. That said, I cannot help thinking I would have caught more were it not for the antics of the worm/spinning brigade and the other two anglers on the beat.

5 Trout, 2 Grayling

Tried fly & other stuff but didn't catch anything although saw lots of fish.

Fly, river conditions high.

6 Trout