Small Stream Addicts: Grayling On The Rhym

With the heavy rain and high river levels lately it’s been a struggle to get out on the river and do some fishing here in South Wales. So when we had a forecast of no rain for the whole week, I made some arrangements with my friends Sion Lewis and Neil Ashman (both Welsh river international fishermen) to have a day out on the River Rhymney. This was my first time on the Rhymney so Sion and Neil were to show me around. All three of us were using 10ft 3# rods set up with French leaders and teams of weighted nymphs. We arrived at 10:00am and made our way down river to our starting point. There was still a hard frost on the river banks and surrounding fields. We decided to go fish for fish and Sion was first up to have a go. Sion fished heavy bugs in the first run and covered every single part of the pool but not a single touch so onwards and upwards, we went, into the next pool. Again, Sion fished every part of the pool with not a single touch so we all decided to fish close together (around 20 or so yards apart) giving each other room to cast and if one of us missed fish the person below fishing has the opportunity to catch them when moving up river. We fished four different pools hard, deep and covered every square inch but not a single thing, not a single attempt at our flies.

After that we had a break and had a chat as to where we thought the fish may lie. We concluded that, even though we were fishing deep runs, they were not deep enough and were too fast for the grayling to shoal up in. We decided to move up river a little where there were some very deep slower pools. As we headed on to the pool that we were to fish, at the back of a run we noticed some very large shapes in the water. At first we thought they were small salmon but uponcloser inspection we realised that they were barbell. All three of (us one by one) optimistically had a go at them, as none of us had ever caught one on the fly before.Sadly we still haven’t and, as they were not interested, we carried on up the pool in search of grayling
Neil trying to get the barbell to bite

This time I was the first to wet a line in the deeper water. Upon my first cast -with a 4.5ml tungsten nymph to help me get right quickly- my indicator shot under and I had a fish on. Another cast into the pool and another fish, and another, and another, which was very nice after a slow couple hours. This carried on for a good hour for the three of us as there was so many grayling in the pool.

One of my decent grayling 1 1/4 lb

After fishing out that pool we knew where to go to catch more fish in the next pool. After a short walk up river we spotted a deep pool near to where we parked the cars(which was ideal!).

The pool had two big boulders placed in it to create slack water in high water and create holding spots for fish so we had an idea where to put our flies. It was big enough for the three of us to fish so it was every man for himself. On our first cast all three of us were into fish, all around the 1 lb mark.

We all knew we were into another big shoal of grayling and thought we were going to catch some larger specimens, so we carried on fishing and catching nice grayling up to 1 1/2lb.

In the end i had to stop fishing as it was so cold ( -5 degrees to be exact), and after putting my hands in the water numerous times (to return fish) I was in pain.

So I just sat tight holding my hands tight together blowing into them whist watching Sion and Neil carry on catching before heading home.

It was a great days fishing on a new river and will definatly be back some time soon to fish it again.

Sion trying a new method of fishing