Trout fishing
Nearly every body forgets that there are many brown trout commonly reaching three quarters of a pound, throughout our river system from Cwm Pennant to the sea. They are nearly all caught when sea trout fishing - at night or with a worm during a flood.
People say there are no trout especially in Cwm Pennant due to acid rain. I disagree, last year right at the top of the Cwm, I sat beside a pool where the sun shone strongly into it and there were dozens of fish some albeit small but two were at least 10 inches long. So much for no fish.
A nice 3/4 lbs. brown trout caught by Carl, Emrys Owens's grandson (20/6/98)
I used to regularly fish the river from 1958 to 1967 below Garn Dolbenmaen - by the bridge at Ystymcegid Uchaf from the opening of the season which was then the 1st of March until the 30th of September right through to September the 30th.
Once the weather had warmed up a little dry fly was a very successful method of fishing. In April/May the following patterns caught well - Tup's Indispensable, Iron Blue Dun and a Palmer Coch y Bonddu with a red ibis tail.
Straight after a flood with clear water, not too bright, a nice breeze, warmish or when the swallows had arrived when they were flying low over the surface of the water, many times I used to catch bags of four to six fish similar in size to Carl's.
In March a peasant tail nymph used to catch fish. Indeed in Llyn Coch, a deep pool just where the river veers away from the road, I remember catching a large fish and playing it out to the banks edge, but I had no net so it broke me. I was fishing with 1½lbs gut! I am sure it was a salmon kelt. The river used to be littered with their dead bodies in March, some of them huge - easily over 20lbs. In fact if I used a very large multi coloured palmer fished dry (size 6) kelts used to rise to this pattern but never managed to hook them.
1962 Early April, Ystymcegid Uchaf - there is now a second bridge for cars. This is now completely overgrown with Alder and Willow!
In July and August the brown trout used to be far more difficult to catch. They seem to bury their heads into the long black moss on all the stones in the river - Fontinalis antipyretica for all you botanists out there! and never seem to actively rise to any natural hatch. The Coch y Bonddu palmer pattern described above fished dry worked well, but was tied on quite a large hook either 8 or 10. The advantage of this was that the small parr ignored it or found it just too large. This pattern I used to use in many of the streams and rivers in this area and catch some really good quality trout in places where people considered there were no trout or they were too small to bother catching. I caught my first sea trout on this pattern just above the bridge at Ystymcegid. Over the following couple of years I caught some 15 sea trout in August by this method.
A nice bag of trout caught as described above on dry fly in Cwm Pennant 1968.
I must confess that I have not fished for trout using these techniques since 1973! I am sure they will work today - I hope that someone can find the time and try and see if I am right and catch a bag of these wonderful wild brownies with the bonus that they are excellent eating as well.