It's Not All About Catching Fish...!!!

My first trip out fishing after a couple of weeks of bad weather was a visit to the River Ithon in Mid-Wales on Sunday.

On arriving at our chosen beat on the river myself and fishing buddy Nick was greeted by a couple of coarse fishing anglers just heading off down the beat with their trotting gear...not what we wanted to see as this beat was barely enough for two angler.

So it was back in the car and a short drive further downstream to a beat I had only fished a couple of times before early last summer so we had no idea what the winter grayling fishing would be like.

                     River as it looked on Sunday

                     Photo of the same bit of water taken last May

The river looked totally different from when I'd last seen it with more than a lot more water running through it, so the set up included a couple of fairly heavyweight tungsten flies to get down quick.

Although conditions weren't perfect there were pools on this beat that looked like they should have grayling queueing up for our flies...but not so! After an almost fruitless search through the whole length we had only managed to connect with a couple of proper fish which both threw the hook, other than that it was a couple of small grayling which Nick found in a deep pool.

Before we headed back home we dropped back into our starting pool where Nick was rewarded with two nice grayling within the space of five minutes, me...I was rewarded with my first blank for quite a while!