Grayling populations are high in both these rivers but the Wye seems to have the greater density and certainly holds more brownies than the Irfon.
I've only had membership of the club for about 12 months so I'm still finding my feet as to what swims are the best to target. This of course will change throughout the year as the fish migrate in and out of the deeper water but at the moment there are areas that I am definitely favouring ahead of others.
One such place was my destination for Saturday afternoon, as you so often find here the wind was blowing down stream so my initial upstream approach was proving to be hard work, but I was soon rewarded with a nice Grayling around the 11" mark soon followed by a smaller one around 6".
Then came a couple of brownies the biggest measuring a fine 13 1/2". All fish taking a small Tungsten Head Pheasant Tail.
After a couple of hours of hard work the wind picked up quite a bit so I decided to try fishing a faster swim downstream using a team of spiders. It wasn't too long before I hit a pocket of fish resulting in a fast and furious hour or so of takes and fish.
As usual with this method it seems to attract the smaller stamp of fish but a couple of the 'moms & dads' also put in a brief appearance.
End result was 20+ fish.....50/50 Grayling & Trout with some good rod benders in amongst them,
with a few of these......
......a few of these......
......And a lot of these!
A re-visit to the same area for a couple of hours on Bank Holiday Monday saw me come away with just a couple of small fish using similar tactics.
A cold, stiff wind put paid to any noticable hatches and a stretch that just a couple of days earlier looked full of life now looked devoid of any life, funny ol' game innit!!!
