Fly fishing diary: August 2020

Sunday, August 2nd, 2020

We took a drive over to Llyn Brenig this morning for the first time this year. It's usually one of our regular venues, but it's only recently reopened to us people from over the border. For a change, we were fishing from the bank.

After driving the Defender around the Brenig arm and finding most of the good spots occupied and the road to our other spot blocked by a security truck.

Closer inspection revealed a camp and some huts set up on the beach near in the woods on the Brenig arm, which we later discovered to be the film set of the latest series of "I'm a Celebrity". Due to the blockage, we turned around, drove down to Nant Glyn and made our way up the dirt track which goes up the opposite side of the lake.

There was a strong breeze in the spot we picked towards Tower Bay and few signs of fish moving. After a quick try with a pike fly to see if any pike or perch were hanging around in the margins - they weren't - I switched over to the trout gear. I'd gone for an intermediate line to start off with and was fishing a small white and gold sparkler booby on a nine-foot leader.

A few seconds after my fly hit the water and started to be pulled down, the line locked -up. While not a massive fish at maybe two pounds tops, it did pull spectacularly well for its size and shot off at speed when it spotted my net. After a fairly lengthy scrap, I eventually managed to scoop the fish up, take a quick look and then slip her back.

A short while after, George had a violent take on a small black booby he was fishing using a similar method, but unfortunately, the fish made a bid for freedom and the fight was shorter-lived than George would have preferred.

The rest of the morning proved tough going. I didn't get another bite and we barely saw a fish move, so we'd clearly picked the wrong spot. That said, we did both manage to relax and de-stress ourselves a little and enjoy the weather, so the low fish count wasn't the end of the world.