River Lugg, Wales

I had a great day out yesterday, fishing the River Lugg near the little village of Pilleth in Wales. The beat was only a handful of miles from the border with England through which the Lugg continues to flow east, ever descending from its birth in the mountains of Wales, to join the River Wye near Hereford.

It’s as far upstream this little river one can go on the Wye & Usk Foundation’s “roving voucher scheme” and offers 1½ miles double bank fishing against a backdrop of the hills of the Radnor forest. The river is small and intimate, flanked by tall, shady trees, and meanders gently, rather than with any force, through farmland and forests.

This trout had an azure blue sheen to its gill cover and some of its red spots had faint blue haloes

As I learn more about fishing rivers, I'm beginning to realise that I'm quite partial to small streams. I enjoy the extra effort that’s required to stealthily deceive the canny, wild fish that inhabit these little slips of clear water, where every cast needs thought along the lines of “If I can get my back cast in that tiny gap between those two branches and flick it into the current underneath that low hanging branch...” More regularly than not this is followed by an expletive and a lost fly, but it is extremely rewarding when it works. 

The Lugg provided a perfect opportunity to properly test my Hardy Flyweight 6’ 2wt rod, used only for the second time. I enjoyed the rod's ability to delicately present a fly. It has a much slower action than my 5wt and, whilst strange at first, I quickly got used to the slower, more relaxed, rhythmical style needed to cast it.

The weather was wholly changeable. One second the valley would be bathed in sunlight, the next in cloud. As the day wore on the weather generally deteriorated and we experienced light drizzle. The strong blustery down river wind, however, was a constant factor which made casting my light line a challenge.

I was joined by a new acquaintance, Laszlo, a Hungarian of similar age who like me lived in the centre of Birmingham. We'd met through an online fishing forum and because Laszlo owned a car, it had made choosing this venue quite an exciting and wide open process. 

We started fishing just after 11.30am and my second cast with a size 16 black Klinkhåmer induced a rise and brought a 9” trout to hand, a great way to start the day. Almost simultaneously Laszlo had a trout on the dry fly in the next pool up. A little later mayflies in different shapes and sizes started to hatch, none more eye-catching than the large Ephemera danica, which I hadn't seen before. This large cream and brown dappled morsel truly sent the trout into a spin. In one pool I watched a little trout no more than 5” long doing its best to gobble up hapless mayflies, although its splashy efforts seemed to miss more mayflies than it ate.

Laszlo's size 10 fly which accounted for several fish

This was my first experience of trout rising to mayflies of this size. I had nothing quite so large in my fly box but Laszlo came to the rescue with his size 10 patterns. Before yesterday, I wouldn’t have given such a large fly much hope for little fish in a little stream. It went against every instinct of mine, but then, I hadn’t counted on the size of these mayflies! When the hatch intensified trout ignored my other, smaller, dry flies and locked on to the large mayflies with exclusive enthusiasm.

In all, I caught and released eight trout between 6 and 11” and lost a fair few too. The best of them came out from under a fallen tree in a flash to swallow the mayfly as it drifted past in fast, riffle water, before darting back under the branches in alarm. It took some side strain to extricate the fish and its power surprised me. Once released it shot off like a streak of lightning back under the submerged tree.

This little trout seemed to have more red spots than black

The only dampener on the day was slicing open my almost new waders on a barbed wire fence. I spent the afternoon with one drenched leg sploshing around in a bit of cold water.

It was a day of heady adventure and discovery. It was lovely to escape the city centre for the quiet oasis of a gentle river scoured into colourful meadows and cool forests. Laszlo's company was good and we agreed to fish together again. I learned a lot about the appealing simplicity of small stream fishing as well as the British countryside. 

I have an interest in history and was delighted to read afterwards that we fished very near to the site of the Battle of Bryn Glas, a resounding Welsh victory in 1402 over a much larger English Army. Any good tale of battle is not without treachery and it is said contingents of Welsh archers in the English force defected and fired arrows into the rear of the advancing English army. Interestingly, the leader of the Welsh rebels, Owain Glyndŵr, was the last native Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales. William Shakespeare wrote of the battle in Henry IV, Part 1:

“A post from Wales loaden with heavy news;
Whose worst was, that the noble Mortimer,
Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
A thousand of his people butchered”