Hindwell Brook, Herefordshire

Laszlo and I arrived to find this little borderland stream full to the brim and running as swiftly as an amusement park log flume. The weather was good and the water clear, so we decided to post our Wye & Usk Foundation vouchers in the box and give the river a try.

The river in its current state of bounty has seen a remarkable change from last year. The Wye & Usk Passport says the Hindwell "suffered from very low flows" in 2011. Fortunately, there is a constant feature in the flux of drought and flood which helps in our pursuit of trout - they must eat!

The Hindwell Brook is a tributary of the River Lugg. I fished the Lugg last year at nearby Pilleth and the two rivers share many similar features. They both have some of the most strikingly handsome brown trout I have seen, with prominent red spots the size and colour of ripe lingonberries. Perhaps the most noticeable similarity is the very fine, loose gravel of their riverbeds which is quite distinct from the bedrock and boulder riverbeds of the other streams and rivers I have fished in the Marches. The gravel crunches noisily underfoot making a sound very much like footfalls on fresh snow.

The swift current made the fishing a little trickier than usual. I had no success except in only the slowest of the water, in the deepest pools where my weighted nymph had a chance to sink to the level of the fish. Admittedly, this is not my favourite type of small stream fishing, but it was fun nonetheless particularly as most of these pools yielded more than one or two fish. A scruffy looking hare's ear pattern with a black beadhead (#16) proved the most successful pattern, accounting for 10 of the 11 trout I managed to bring to hand.

I had the added bonus of briefly spotting a kingfisher, the first time I have seen one in the Marches. It capped off a pleasant day's fishing.

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