Oliver Burch's Trout and Grayling Monthly Report - November 2021

First big storm of the season and our son Zlatko was already on his way to Northamptonshire. Like all the power company linesmen, he has his own patch, in his case the Forest of Dean, but the teams all rally round when there is damage in another region. For me, there was little enough to do on this first day of winter time. I looked out at the rain drops running down the window pane, re-checked the gauges on-line, brewed coffee and tied a few flies. After seemingly days of rain and with all rivers in flood, clearly there would be no grayling fishing for a while. Appointments with clients had accordingly been delayed; welcome to a day in the uncertain life of a river fishing guide. Meanwhile, as mentioned last month, our local Forest Pool has been closed by Natural England due to a crayfish plague outbreak and it’s anybody’s guess how long the fishing ban might last. Thus there would be no rainbow trout fishing today or possibly all through the winter. Frustrating it is, when there’s no fishing to be had anywhere. Even maintenance on the brooks would not be possible at the moment. Add to this the fact that we were supposed to be moving house during November, but we had just heard that one of the buyers down the chain had backed out at the last moment. In any case I have always hated the business of moving house, a process which seems comparable to entering purgatory. I truly hope that if we ever get it done, this will be the last time.   

After a while I put the gun in the Landrover and splashed through deepening puddles on Forest back roads to the Mork shooting ground. This is just a short mile above the Wye at Bigsweir Bridge, tucked into a little side valley, beautiful at any time of the year and even attractive now in the heavy rain. Here, due to the weather a sort of down the line competition had been organised involving firing from the covered terrace of the lodge. I hit some of the rising clays but shot badly at the crossers and felt worse. Confidence or lack of it counts for a lot in shooting. This disgruntled old man was thinking by now about taking up a new hobby. Maybe ditch digging, which might well be in vogue judging by the number of local people who were out today with spades trying to defend their cottages from the rising floods.

Whatever my mood, I really didn’t plan to indulge in another bout of environmental agency bashing this month. On a daily basis, the English EA and Welsh NRW come in for plenty of stick from many different directions, quite apart from the angling lobby. And most of us know individual staff members who clearly are personally committed to environmental protection and service to the public, yet who all too often find themselves apologising for the weakness of the organisation which employs them. However, right now it is difficult to write about fishing and rivers in our area and remain silent about the failure of environmental protection agencies, who are already experiencing well deserved criticism at both local and international levels.

One other matter is in the public view right now, and this very much concerns the Wye. Local organisations including the Foundation have effectively brought to national attention the problem with phosphate levels, both in the fields of the catchment area and in the water of the river. Thus we have the notorious algal blooms of recent years, along with the death of the ranunculus weed and the creatures which live on it. This problem has arisen quite quickly and follows the recent authorising by the Welsh Government of more than 100 intensive chicken rearing units in the Wye catchment. Millions of chickens living in the upper catchment produce huge amounts of acrid, phosphate-rich manure and to date it has simply been spread on the nearby land. Phosphate is known as a fertiliser of course, but there are limits to how much the land can absorb and use. The surplus just soaks into the rivers. This matter is at least being acknowledged and discussed and I was encouraged to hear the CEO of a large chicken production business the other day suggesting several alternative disposal methods for the manure. On the other hand, as with all these problems, will something actually happen when the talking is done? I cannot imagine an intensive chicken unit being closed by the Welsh Government, any more than I can imagine an off-shore salmon rearing unit being closed by the Scottish Government, although the damage they do to wild salmon and sea trout runs has been known for years. Finally, I will spare you any thoughts on climate change and the COP in Glasgow. I am sure you will have read quite enough on that subject by the end of this month.

Initially November brought us high pressure and the first frost of the year, although the rivers were still slowly running down from high flood. On the 4th when the Llanstephan gauge was still at 2ft 6 inches, I tried trotting from the bank of the Builth town water, running maggots under a float into slacks and eddies. This enterprise was probably undertaken in a spirit of misplaced optimism. I did catch a few grayling, but was more troubled by out of season trout which seemed to be sheltering there, and at one point I realised a large black salmon had moved right under the rod top. Time to move on! Meanwhile chub anglers were having a good time on the lower river and some barbel were also turning up. By the 8th the rivers were starting to come into condition, beginning with the Irfon. BS from Pontyclun had 5 grayling on nymphs at Cefnllysgwynne and oddly enough complained of the Irfon suffering from low water levels, although he quoted a gauge reading of 0.553. I would have said this was high water fishing and that 0.60 on the Cilmery gauge is about the maximum for fly fishing!

CT from Cardiff with 2 friends had a grayling of 2 pounds 4 ounces in a catch of 12 from the Melyn Cildu beat upstream. By now the weather was remarkably warm for November, although that did not generally equate to either late hatching flies or rising grayling. Those of us who had hoped for a sort of extension of October and more dry fly fishing were to be disappointed; the grayling which were caught this month were nearly all accounted for by nymphs or the trotting rod.

A sudden rise in the Wye on the 10th caught some of us out. This was a surprise, because it hadn’t rained! Students of the strange art of gauge watching might note that, at this time of the year, the river reacts quite quickly to rainfall. This is because the leaves are drying out and falling, while the sap is not rising in the trees. While trees are not sucking up water, what falls on the land goes pretty much straight into the rivers. In this case, the Irfon had not risen and neither had the Ithon. The extra water had come from Llangurig at the top of the main river and we put it down to intense overnight showers in the Cambrian Mountains. The river began to drop again at the rate of about 2 inches a day and on the 13th MN from Bristol reported 10 grayling to 14 inches at Llangoed and Lower Llanstephan.

MB from Abergavenny reported as many as 20 canoes on Craig Llyn the following day. We had a report of two anglers arriving simultaneously to fish the Abbeydore wild stream beat; one had booked it and the other clearly had not. If you have a Wild Stream season ticket, do be careful and check the evening before (as I admit that I have on occasion failed to do) that the beat you have set your heart on fishing is available. JH from Lichfield reported canoeists (legally) launching at the Rectory and remarked on their politeness, which is always much appreciated when experienced. On the 15th PB from Upton-on-Severn caught 5 grayling while trotting at Lyepole. He was one of several anglers who commented that, perhaps compared to more familiar nymphing methods, trotting isn’t always as easy as some imagine, especially in small streams! I had a try myself on the new Irfon beat at Melyn Cildu; I couldn’t find lots of grayling, but there were three big ones apart from unwanted trout. AB from Hereford with 4 friends had a difficult day coarse fishing on the Dean and Chapter Pool, but reported that it was so warm that the bats were out in numbers at dusk. PK from Gloucester was using a single small Pheasant Tail Nymph at Skenfrith on the 17th, and caught 7 grayling. RG from Old Sodbury tried the same Monnow beat with various nymphing methods on the 19th and had a dozen grayling to 15 inches along with a couple of chub. AB from London tried the new trotting regime at Eyton and accounted for 13 grayling. He also reported changes in the level and colour of the Lugg during the day, which, given the lack of rain in the area at the time, seems odd. I had the same experience when fishing here a couple of days later; the Lugg suddenly coloured up for a while during the early afternoon, which made me wonder if works of some kind are going on upstream. There are a few open runs for the float fisher at Eyton, but mostly it’s a matter of “picking pockets” here and there. There is certainly a good population of grayling of different sizes.    

By this time the weather had turned quite abruptly, the wind having swung to the North, bringing wintry temperatures with it from the Arctic. Days were bright and sunny, but chilly too, and we had regular morning frosts. The coarse fishermen on the lower Wye were not doing so well with the barbel now, but chub still featured in cold water catches. Meanwhile salmon had been present on the spawning flats for several weeks, but not many redds were to be seen yet. AG of Harleston, Norfolk, fished the Dee with nymphs at the Glyndwr Preserve on the 22nd and accounted for 23 grayling to 15 inches. The favoured “bug” was apparently a Purple Perdigon, the French nymph almost entirely constructed of coloured resin hardened with an ultra-violet lamp. DC from Jackfield, Telford, was another to fish the new Irfon beat at Melyn Cildu the following day, and amongst his seven grayling were four between 1lb 15oz and 2lb 3 oz – “a dream session for me.” We all seem to have had the same experience here - not that many grayling and certainly not smaller grayling, but a few real specimens. Back on the main river, MH from Swansea reported 8 grayling from the Rectory taken on a Goldbead Hare’s Ear nymph. On the 25th PS from Kingsland fished at Ty Newydd, which he found busy with canoeists launching in the Bachawy Run, and while fishing the “klink and dink” duo method accounted for a dozen small grayling. Interestingly, most of them were on the “klink” dry fly, which certainly bucked the trend for November.

Another big equinoctial storm started to blow up the next evening, this one code-named “Arwen,” and in its nature both cold and rough. I will write something about gales and storms next month. Conditions out of doors were still difficult with low temperatures and high winds on the 27th, but MH from Swansea came back to the Rectory and caught 11 small grayling on various weighted nymphs. The upper Wye rose a foot, but quickly fell. November fishing was sometimes difficult, but by the end of the month we had received reports of quite good grayling catches and certainly some specimen fish, more from the tributaries than the main river. Trotting was a new feature for some of the tributary beats. I saw quite a few salmon in the Wye during November, although perhaps not so many in the tributaries as you might expect. It’s to be hoped that the current cold spell will trigger more widespread spawning activity. At the same time we began to receive reports of diseased fish, particularly in the nearby River Tawe where numbers of dead salmon and sea trout have been found badly infected with the saprolegnia fungus. After spawning this would not be unusual as the process involves immense stress on the fish and kills many of them, but if before spawning it is yet more bad news.

It’s unusual, these days, to come across a UK-based professional fly dresser. Of course this is a profession with a venerable tradition and the names of some of the great fly dressers of the past – Foster, Hammond, Woolley – deserve to rank with those of the great anglers and innovators in our sport. Very often the invention of a really remarkable fly which is now standard in the canon was the result of a collaboration between a competent angler and a skilled fly dresser. Greenwell’s Glory would be the classic example. The problem today for the fly dressing profession is that nobody has ever really found a way to automate the labour-intensive process and that, when tying down to a price, it’s very difficult to make much money out of it. I would guess that around 50% of modern game anglers who become seriously engaged with the sport take to tying their own sooner or later. Doing so adds a huge dimension to the pleasure of the whole activity. But others will be buying from the commercial market, very likely patterns for which the actual dressing work is farmed out to somewhere like Kenya. Some of these, such as the patterns of Fulling Mill, are very good and made from excellent materials. Others, unfortunately, are not. There are in truth some quite awful flies out on the market, usually over-dressed, over-coloured and constructed on unreliable hooks. It’s a mystery to me why an angler would spend significant sums on his travel to the river or lake, his fishing ticket and his rod, reel and line, only to save 50p by using a cheap, badly constructed fly on the business end.

Gary Holt lives in the Irfon valley, fishes some of our local rivers and has been dressing flies for 30 years. He tells me he occasionally gives fly tying demonstrations at the Cammarch Hotel in Llangammarch Wells. I only recently came across his activities as a professional dresser – blame me for that - but friends and I have been extremely impressed by his website – see www.myflieswetsanddries.co.uk. Apparently he ties everything, from nymphs to salmon and salt water flies, with materials which look to me to be of high quality and, equally important, well-chosen and proportionately applied. Believe me, the prices are fair. Gary’s catalogue includes both old standards and new patterns; why not give some of them a try?

Gary’s “Irfon Bug” is one which intrigues me. It seems to have the right characteristics: dull-coloured, even slightly scruffy. I have a theory that the best fishing flies are relatively easy to make and a bit like this, which is indeed to say dull-coloured and slightly scruffy. My own flies are scruffy alright, and nothing like as neatly finished as Gary’s seem to be. I sometimes think that a good fishing fly is a little bit like an old-fashioned policeman. What do I mean by that? Well, at one point in a rather idiosyncratic career, I worked for a man who had formerly been an inspector in the Hong Kong Police anti-corruption squad. I seem to remember him describing certain experienced CID officers as “…old school, a bit scruffy, probably a bit corrupt – but good thief-takers!” I think fishing flies should be like that: good fish-takers!

You may find this a bit of a surprise, but there’s a particular book which I believe thinking river anglers of all disciplines would be well advised to read, and perhaps read more than once. This is Salmon Taking Times, which RV Righyni published back in 1965. Reg Righyni, of course, became famous for writing the classic Grayling a few years later, and among grayling anglers his name and memory are pretty much revered as he is seen as the father of the modern sport. However, Salmon Taking Times made much less of an impact and many dyed in the wool salmon specialists declare themselves baffled by some of the things he has to say in this work. I will admit to being baffled by much of it too, but that is very likely my fault. There is no doubt that Righyni was a very good salmon angler and that he had a knack of somehow knowing when salmon would and wouldn’t take. His book is an attempt to make sense of that “somehow.” Bear in mind that Righyni fished the Lune and various Scottish rivers in the days when a lot more salmon were present, which would certainly have given him opportunities for experiment. Falkus was another who claimed to have the “knack of knowing in advance” when the magic moment would come, but in his case he made no real attempt to rationalise it.

I confess to an attraction to the second school of thought and I’m sure that salmon and sea trout have taken me with the barometer falling on occasions. In fact there are those who will tell you that falling barometric pressure makes salmonids extra aggressive. However, Righyni has written another chapter which should not only be of interest to salmon anglers. This is Reading River Currents: the behaviour of water. A shorter title might have been simply “hydraulics.” I don’t think another writer has attempted anything quite like this, and although Righyni’s explanations and diagrams in this case are easy to follow, in fact almost blindingly obvious, it is very useful stuff for those of us who spend long hours wading in rivers to understand. Thus Righyni explains that the best way to understand the action of currents in a pool is to put your head close to the surface and look upstream, that rough water running into the head of a pool is affected by gravity but the smooth flow accelerating at the tail is subjected to suction. He also explains the reasons why large, medium and small stones are deposited in different places, eddies and back washes, the actions of scouring and deposition, and why bank erosion occurs in sometimes unexpected places. The book is worth reading for this section alone and anyone who fishes free-stone rivers for trout and grayling as well as salmon should find it valuable. There is a final section from the Usk angler Terry Thomas who makes a series of comments on Righyni’s findings. Salmon Taking Times has been reprinted by Swan Hill Press.

Every Armistice Day we see an explosion of red poppies in our Forest towns. Still they come out to lay the wreaths, young and old, the Sea Scouts and the Army Cadets, and elderly members of the British Legion in dark blazers with their medals. We are a long way now from “Flanders fields”; this is after all the 100th anniversary of the Royal British Legion. Given the passage of time and the fact that this is Gloucestershire, any surviving direct memories of suffering, imprisonment or lost comrades are today connected with the Battle of the Imjin River, or more likely Bosnia, Iraq or Afghanistan, rather than the earlier World Wars of the 20th Century. However, the Armistice or Commemoration Day traditions, here at least, are as strong as ever.

Best Christmas wishes to all,

Oliver Burch 

Wye Valley Fishing