Escley Brook, Herefordshire

If medals were awarded for small stream fishing, I reckon I earned one yesterday. I fished the middle beat of the Escley Brook which flows very near to the border between Wales and England. The Escley is a tributary of the River Monnow and one of the many roving voucher beats in the area offered by the Wye & Usk Foundation. 

This popular beat has achieved consistently good reviews for its generous 2½ mile length, scenic upland setting and teeming head of wild fish, and all week I had been looking forward to fishing it. 

The stream would be diminutive at the wettest of times, but given the lack of rain this season we were faced with its bare bones. A local farmer commented that he had never seen the river so low, and the exposed tree roots along the stream’s course suggested that he was probably right. As you can imagine, the low, clear water conditions made for extremely challenging fishing.

The stream flows over concrete-like bedrock in most places making the stream bed a featureless open void, which is probably the last place you would want to live if you were a nervous trout in half the water you were used to. In other places the stream bed was littered with flat slabs of broken rock in varying sizes, torn away in the distant past by geological forces. 

I spotted many trout, but most saw me first. Often it was the tell tale arrow dart of a spooked fish that I would notice, all too late. The trout were extremely skittish and leopard-like stealth was required to get anywhere near close enough to casting range. I spent more time casting on my knees and haunches than upright and in some cases even that wasn’t enough! It also didn't assist that the pools were as still and calm as the water in a bathtub, not my favourite kind of fishing at the best of times. I much prefer fishing the riffles and faster water but that water looked far too shallow and exposed for all but the tiniest trout.

I mentioned last week that I was growing quite partial to small stream fishing. This was another level reached, smaller, wilder and far more challenging than anything I had done before and I enjoyed the experience.

It started to rain just as my fishing partner, Laszlo, and I arrived and rigged up our rods, but it soon passed and the remainder of the day was a tug of war tussle between the sun – when the fishing became even more difficult – and the clouds. The very first pool upstream of the road bridge was probably the best of the beat. It is formed after a series of cascading waterfalls and even in the drought conditions had enough depth to fish a nymph below the dry. The pool had a high rocky bank on the right, down which water was trickling from the recent rainfall, and the left bank had trees which completely shrouded the pool, making casting difficult. On my third roll cast into the bubble line, the klinkhamer with bright red post disappeared as an 8” fish took the size 22 bead head pheasant tail nymph below it. The fish came to hand after a brief but spirited fight and it's the first time I can remember catching a fish on such a small fly. A few casts later in the same pool I lost another fish which had also taken the small nymph.

There were a few mayflies about but the fish largely seemed disinterested in them. It was the birds that were the most excited in the hatching mayflies, pouncing on them from their tree perches in aerial acrobatic displays as the defenceless creatures lifted from the water. Not all of the mayflies went unnoticed to the trout though, and I did catch my second and largest trout at just about 9” on a mayfly pattern. I even saw an agile little trout come clean out of the water in an arcing dive and catch a mayfly fluttering almost a foot above the water’s surface. He must have been watching the birds.

In most places the river was too low to fish a nymph without getting snagged on every drift. But when I could I added the size 22 bead head PTN below my dry fly and the fish seemed willing to take it. I lost count of the number of fish I lost on the nymph. Perhaps it was the small size of the hook? But I did land another trout and a little grayling of about 8" with it. The grayling came from the pool I described earlier - almost at 9pm - as we made our way back to the car at the end of the day. Neither of us had taken a watch with us and we were a little surprised at the time when we made it back to the car!

Another little trout, my fourth of the day, sipped a size 18 black klinkhamer almost as soon as the fly touched the water.

Laszlo making good use of the cover

It was a day of hard, uncompromising fishing and I was grateful that I had some success to show for it. Little stream, light rod, fine tippet, tiny flies and fish of wild Lilliputian brilliance to match. This must surely be one of the most enchanting and rewarding methods of fly fishing.