With the terrible weather the past couple of weeks all of our south Wales rivers have been out of condition and other activities such as fly tying has taken over. For me, a lovely little box of boobies have come together along with a few buzzers. On the odd dry day we’ve had I’ve ventured out to Garnffrwd fly fishery and holiday complex, a small still water which is well looked after and attended by local anglers.

Me and Jonathan headed to the lake a couple of times just to get some fishing in whilst we can. The first trip we were surprised by the weather, it had broke and opened up to blue skies and a temperature of about 10 degrees. Pretty warm considering!

With many anglers on the lake it was easy to see who was catching and on what. The mos prolific method was fishing a floating fly line with either a buzzer or spider as fly choice. Small black and olive buzzers were hatching along with a couple of odd olives. I found by fishing the french leader and targeting fish I could see would enhance my catch rate, throwing the fly about a meter in front of the fish, hoping it would see the fly before it sunk too deep! Spiders with small clear or pearl wings would help slow the flies decent and coincidently more fish in the net.

The second session was much the same, but with a lot more olives, sun and anglers! We’d picked a day where the Welsh Ladies fly fishing team were out on a get together – some great ability amongst the crowd with many fish being tempted to their flies. Damn pheromones, wish I had them!

Olives started popping at around mid-day and I broke off the french leader to put on a shorter tapered leader. Just so it would make casting at rising fish easier. A small olive klink on a gold hook was my fly of choice and it managed to fool over 15 trout within a couple of hours. I found using 3lb nylon to really help as water clarity is absolutely perfect. Throughout the day though, I noticed that covering rising fish didn’t seem to result in many takes, it was as if they were taking the dry and heading back down to the bottom. By again, targeting cruising fish which were laying around 1ft down I could put the fly directly into their path and 8/10 times the fish would take interest.

I tested out one of the Airflo Ridge Supple Impact fly line, the hot coral/white version. I found this to be the ideal line for picking off the water and covering rising fish quickly, it floated high on the surface so there was minimum friction when taking off, and also a perfectly formed front taper meant that presentation was perfect each and every cast. A welded micro loop on the end wad for easy leader changes and allowed the knots to literately fall through the eyes.

Jonathan had one of his biggest fish, a rainbow which would have tipped the scales of about 4lb, but in fin perfect condition. Check out the Images below.

Garnffrwd information: http://www.garnffrwdflyfishing.co.uk/