Saturday saw me and Jonathan venture to the River Irfon in sub zero temperatures and thick fog.

The fog was thick from leaving the house to our arrival, temperatures were below zero and hitting -5.5 in the thickest of fog. In the clearer patches the sun was bright, sort of illuminating the road as it passed through the fog. As the proper hardcore welsh anglers do it, Stereophonic’ was the album choice; Goldfish bowl. Sort of what we hoped the Irfon was going to be.

The day started off pretty well meeting Tim Hughes in Builth Wells and a short stroll into the town to collect tickets. We jumped back into the car and made our way upstream to the junction pool, where we chatted and set up our fishing gear. We all opted for 10ft light lined rods, ideal for czech and french nymphing.

Stepping into the river after breaking off from the path after a short walk, Tim took the air and water temperature. The water was reading 4.5 degrees C and the air, 2.5 below… It was cold to say the least. One of them days you actually hope not to catch to many as the thought of touching a fish or putting your hands remotely near the water is considered dangerous.

Within our first few casts Jon and I put three fish in the net,  two trout and a grayling of around 1lb. The pool we were fishing was perfect, a small depression in the bottom, causing a small eddy on the inside crease.

Moving upstream into the perfect looking runs our catch rate slowed down dramatically, with me just taking a few brownies in the shallow water. Weird how we couldn’t get anything out of the faster water? – Check out my recent blog post why.

After sitting watching Tim for a few minutes I changed to the bugs, and quickly picked up some bigger grayling in the nice looking water. One fly that seemed to stand out was this,  baby pink dubbing over Flourescent Orange thread, looks sort of ‘eggy’ to me!

After taking a few more fish, we headed to the top of the beat where usually the’re a few nice fish lurking, but nothing on this day. It was pretty poor there, but im guessing being low in the valley with a high tree line the sun hadn’t spent a lot of time on that area, the trees were still covered in frost from the night before and the temperature dropped further! It was a Foggy start to what turned out to be a pretty good day.

A Few pictures from the day : –