Well all good things come to an end and the trout season has finally passed and the grayling season has just started. If the grayling season is anything like the trout season ive had, it’s going be a good winter.

Nicholas, a good friend of mine gave me a ring in the week and asked if I was free to fish the Rhondda for a few hours on thursday. As I was  booked in for an operation on the friday I jumped at the chance to fish my last day in the trout season for myself.  Nicholas picked me up the following morning at around 8.30 and after a chat we decided to give the taff a go before hitting the Rhondda. Nicholas has never fished the top half of the taff where I live so it was all new water for him so it was a pleasure to show him all the runs and pools that I have on my doorstep.  We made our way down river a few hundred yards and got in at the head of a large pool where there was a good flow of water and where I’ve had a few nice grayling in the past and plenty of trout, But this day there seemed to be nothing moving in the run so we moved on up river a little into a shallower water with a few nice weed beds running down. Only after a few short casts in between the channels of the weed I was into my first trout of the day. Nicholas was fishing just below me so I called him up to fish the run knowing that the fish were up in the run. Nick moved into the run and was into the fish straight away on the french leader.

As Nicholas worked the run catching a few more trout and the odd small grayling we moved onto the next pool and fished the slow back-end of the pool with the leader.  The water wasn’t very deep and not much flow so it called for a single 2m nymph. The first few casts were behind a large rock that stuck out of the river bed and it wasn’t long when the indicator slipped up river and I was into another wild brownie. As I turned around I could see Nicholas coming up behind me fishing the far bank so I just waited for him to hook a fish and get a shot of him in action. The shot below was taken in the second of the strike. Moving out of the pool after picking a few more trout out, the time was ticking away so we made a move to give us enough time to fish the parts of the Rhondda that we wanted to. We stepped in where the Rhondda goes into the taff and worked our way up river under the road catching a few trout in the pocket water. We moved into a good pool that ive had some really good fun on the dry but there was nothing rising so we set about it with the leader. We both managed a few fish to hand and Nicholas lost a nice fish after a crazy fight. The trout manged to transfer the hook into a small amount of rubbish on the bottom.  Unlucky Butt 😦  but that’s fishing and he’ll be there for me next year:). As we stood there talking, I happened to look down a drop off in the water and saw a few trout on the bedrock just lying there, that’s the first for me on the Rhondda and it was nice to see. I pitched the nymphs just above them and jigged them past and one turned and grabbed the nymph but I missed the take. It happens and after a few more tries I decided to leave them to it. For the rest of the day we fished well and picked off a good number of trout and covered a fair bit of the Rhondda and it become a good outing and great company with Nicholas. Ill leave you with a few photos of are cracking days fishing.