Over the last few weekends the water in all of our rivers have been perfect, low, clear and with a slight chill in the air. The perfect Grayling weather in my eyes! At the moment the Taff Grayling don’t seem to be shoaled up like they have been in recent years, but finding them isn’t a problem. Once you get into a run where they are feeding, there’s plenty to be caught.

We have a team get together around two weeks ago and the Welsh rivers team headed to the bottom of the Ospreys water, near Treforest. The river was in a fine state, clear and low, so after a quick chat we setup and hit the river. Two boys headed downstream, one upstream and the rest of us jumped into the main run. It wasn’t long before the Welsh angler of the year, Terry Bromwell, hooked into a small grayling Czech nymphing. We fished together for a few minutes talking about flies and leader until I made my way upstream into the head of the run.

The sun was low and hardly broke the treeline leaving us shaded for the whole three hours we fished. It was tough going until I landed on a pod near the back end of the run, the fished pushed lower than what I could cast, but I managed to get into them using the trio. An olive nymph which I’ve been working on fished well, taking most of the fish with the biggest i estimated over a pound and a half.

I planned through the summer to do more grayling trips further afield, somewhere different from the usual Taff or Rhymney. I don’t know what you guys are like but sometimes I get complacent with a water I fish regularly – heading to the same pools, fishing the same methods and so, so somewhere different usually pressures me in to fishing the water I have and changing where needs be to get that fish. When I have a trial coming up I don’t spend that much time on the water im fishing for this very reason. I like to practice a water other than where I am, so I don’t make those mistakes again.

Back to the fishing: Unfortunately, I can’t name the river or section of water I fished recently due to the number of people fishing the section. I’ve been asked to keep it ‘hush hush’ and am happy to do that for this reason. Most waters are getting hammered and finding some quiet sections of river are tough.

The fishing isn’t usually that great on this section of river and getting a couple of fish to hand through the day is a good effort. After fishing a pool behind two other anglers, I’d hooked and managed to loose three fish. One grayling and two lively trout. A good start, except for the bad angling. I moved upstream and spotted a small section of water which Dean had missed, dropped the fly in and the indicator shot under, a lively grayling around the pound mark.

I looked upstream and could see Dean under the bridge and after a few chucks we met up for a chat. He had no grayling but a lovely brace of brown trout, on the same cast! The fishing was as tough as we expected but we soldiered on.

Moving upstream we come to a deepish glide which looked to drop off into the abyss along a tree line. We both jumped into the pool and caught a fish each fairly quickly. Both around a pound and a quarter. As Kibs pushed on upstream I took another decent grayling. All on the olive grub.

We had some banter about him missing the main pod of fish, ‘left them for you‘ he shouted. As I dropped the flies onto the water the indicator shot away again, and this time, a fish which I wouldn’t like to leave for anyone! After a decent scrap and some solid head shakes a beautiful 54cm grayling graced the landing net. A fish which I’ll remember for a long time. We estimated it near 3lb in weight. It could have been bigger, we didn’t weight it, but such a fish shouldn’t be classed as a ‘trophy’ just a memory. A couple of snaps and off it swap.

To end the day we returned to an old spot we fished years ago when we both started grayling fishing, to be rewarded with the same fish each! One that would have tipped the scales at 2lb we thought. It took basically the same fly, too!