Decided to hit the Taff nice and early this morning and I was on the river for around 6.30. Due to the overnight rain, the river was running with colour and I did think it was be a waste of time on looking at it first but I knew at some point in the day it would clear a little so I pressed on.

I didn’t really know where to start on the river this morning due to the colour so I headed up river for the shallow runs and pools that I knew for. On being so early and still quite cold there was no fly life buzzing around so the french leader was set up with only one 2m hares ear jig.  Not a very heavy fly but I was only fishing the margins and little ripples and glides,  just picking my way up river slowly.  It seamed that I was flogging a dead horse but after covering a few runs I finally managed to catch one small trout in the edge. Not very big but I was very gracious of catching the wee fella in the conditions.  By the time I worked my way up river a fair distance without catching a single fish, I decided to sit down and just chill for a bit just watching the water and wildlife. It’s surprising what you see if you open your eyes and keep still.  I was lucky enough to watch a King Fisher on the far bank doing what they do best.  On this part of the river its quite wide and my zoom on my camera was not good enough to take the  picture, gutting really but I am saving for a new zoom  lens 🙂 As the morning started to warm up, the fly life started to kick in with a few small olives coming off and I did push a few brook duns off the bank side while walking up river. It was just one of them days on the fishing side. It seemed that the river was void of fish and movement. As the day went on with only one fish to hand I was feeling a little daunted and my mind was wandering of the fishing.  I made one last ditch attempt to find fish by getting out of the river and walking up river a few miles. By the time I got to the place I wanted to be, the river was clearing off nicely.

This is where i stept in above

The flow was a little faster where I ended up so I had to change the setup, I pulled off around 4 feet of 3lb stroft ABR and tied in a dropper around 18″  from the point fly. As always I had a Hares ear jig and on the dropper a PT flash back. The decision  to move up river and changing the set-up was a good idea, it all come together and fish started to come to hand in no time. I was quite glad really.  In the photo above on the left hand side you can see a large boulder and this is where this little beauty come from below

As I was releasing this trout the heavens opened up and I mean it was hammering down to say the least. I took cover for a few minutes until it passed over and carried on fishing. As i was moving on,  I came upon a long pool with a few fish rising in the back edge and along the far bank. I slipped the dry rod off my back and set it  up with a 15ft tapered leader that Kieron Jenkins kindly got me, for the fly I used a size 16 olive pattern. There were a few Blue wings around and a few iron blue duns. I couldn’t really see what they were taking so i took a chance and after the second cast, the fish took the fly as sweet as a nut!. A few more came to hand after the first one and it was going well until I got to the middle of the pool and for some reason it went dead,  so after that I made my way back down river to get closer to home because it was getting quite late in the day. As i moved back down from where I came from I could see a few fish on the fin, so I had a play around before making a move home.