Today me and my friend Paul Jenkins ‘Bushy’ fished the newly leased ‘Ospreys’ streach of the River Taff at Cilfynydd towards Abercynon.

We met at the Car park in Cilfynyd ind’est at 9am.  We walked to what was the old boundary of the Ospreys stretch and started to walk the newly acquired waters – looking at the pools and debating what methods to use. As always, I took two fly rods, My  Greys streamflex 10ft 3# and My favourite – Greys GS2 8ft 4#. Carrying two rods can sometimes be a pain, but due to the frequent but sporadic hatches of Olives, Yellow mays and Brook duns having two rods enables me to swap and change without re-tying my leaders or methods and cover that fish that s rising before it goes down.

To start, I tackled up with a team of flies on a french leader. My french leader consists of a 9 meter tapered  leader and a duo coloured indicator nylon.

The business end consisted of 6ft of 4lb Stroft ABR and two jigs spaced around 18 inches apart. The flies where basically hears ears with 3mm tungsten heads – gold and black.

After a quick chat with Bushy, we decided to fish – fish for fish. Meaning one of us would fish and the other watching, I like this method of fishing because it allows me to watch different anglers in different situation. As Bushy is one of the top class anglers in the country, it’s always good to keep a sharp eye on what flies ‘he’s putting on and what he’s doing in different water.

We worked our way up the stretch taking around 6-7 fish out of the first 100 yards between us, It was obvious we were doing something right! The river was on good form although being low and clear, the fish were very obliging in taking our nymphs.

Once fishing the fast pocket water, we could see a nice long glide in the horizon! So it was on our bike and towards to pool we went. Creeping and peering through the pea shooters it was obvious this was a big fish pool! And that it was! After carefully negotiating my way across the slow deep pool, trying not to fall in or spook the pool, we got to the fishable side of the pool where the run was on the opposite side and the eddy was in easy reach. It was running about 6ft deep, too deep to wade but just the right depth for me to french nymph. After working the crease closest to me, where the quicker water meets the slack on the inside it was obvious the fish wern’t there! Or was it my flies not getting deep enough? So it was into the box, and on with the 3.5mm tungsten. First cast, indicator stopped and upriver she went, with nothing but my 3 weight rod to stop her I knew I had a fight on my hands. Running, diving and doing everything possible it could to free my hook I gently persuaded her into my net. And after a quick photo, off she went to fight another day.

After taking maybe 20 fish between us,  and working near enough a mile upstream Kieron, Pauls son joined us. Kieron tackled up with basically the same as me, two jigs on a french leader.. although they were from his secret box which doesn’t come out a lot 😉 I have tried to have a look but it seems to disappear quicker than the little minnows in the shallows. He was quickly into his first fish, taking one second cast around the pound mark on a red tag jig. Bushy spotted another just swirl under the surface and the next cast, it was in the net.

Moving swiftly upstream, into a fast but shallow run I could see Kieron was into a good fish. I rushed downstream getting the camera ready and into video mode and into a good position to watch the fish slip into the net, but as he was lifting the rod to lure the fish, the fly came out and the point fly hooked into the adipose fin. Take a look at the video below of how not to land a fish! LOL

 

The river above where we met, started to get wider, slower and deeper. By this time there were not so many flies hatching and the fishing started to slow down. So we started to move to the head of the pools taking the easier fish just to build our numbers up. Not long later we decided to make a move after a long day searching with better than expected results.