Charls Jardine spends the day with two anglers who have turned a passion into a lifestyle.
With the strengthening midwinter sun burning off vapour into columns along the rivers and streams threading their way through the Marches and mid-Wales, it seemed to be just about a perfect grayling day.
Andrew Cartwright and Paul Penllington are not just passionate about fishing the upper Severn - the river virtually consumes their whole lives. Living at Caerwys they are afforded that unique opportunity to blend and mesh with the river on an almost daily basis.
The thing that strikes you though when talking to them, is their love for the water - and not just the fishing. They are inextricably bound to the river, it's conservation it's very wellbeing. The river is in good hands.
Their enthusiasm for one species is also infectious - grayling. For these two anglers there is no finer fish. They love the time of year that they fish for `the lady' and they "love the tactics, the fly patterns and everything about it," enthuses Andrew.
The enthusiasm was infectious and was buoyed up by the promise of some very large grayling and a river that, after considerable rain over the previous week, was fining down to a mouth-wateringly interesting colour.
We watched as a perfect grayling slipped through our hands like the slickest fly line. However, on the brighter side, and prior to us fishing, I was able to gain a unique insight into how these two anglers tick. Also, how the river pulses season by season through their lives and the sorts of things one should do if of course you managed to string up a rod.
Oddly, it is neither the trout during the spring or summer nor the late-running salmon that fires their angling passions.
They wait in anticipation of autumn and the promise of grayling - often very, very big ones indeed.
Because the two anglers almost build their lives around the river they can dip in and out of the fishing during the summer months. They only go out when they feel that it is actually worth fishing, something that is getting later and later with each season. Gone are the big hatches of upwings of seasons past, replaced with midges - dipterans - on the edge of darkness.
Paul started: "The whole river is different now. Gone are the olives. We do get the odd hatch is still good but very difficult to take advantage of. Things are not what they used to be."
"Mind you," added Andrew. "While we do occasionally fish we do police the river more during the summer. We love to help people and give them pointers towards an enjoyable day. But we are constantly amazed at how people behave, bending the rules and using maggot when they shouldn't, fishing areas they are not allowed to and taking more fish than permissible and so on:"
But they say the worst of all, the most heinous crime of all, is finding the scales of large grayling littering the banks. If there is one thing that Andrew and Paul rise to quicker than a hungry brown trout to a mayfly, it is the needless death of their beloved large grayling. They see the act as utterly senseless.
As we were tackling up, Andrew and Peter confessed that it was the dry fly that had been producing the better fish for them up until the heavy rains had come. This was now staining the river a sort of opaque, milky bluey-brown; eminently fishable but not for the dry fly.
Up to this point it was the diminutive (sizes 18, 20 and 22) but excellent Griffiths' Gnat that had produced surface-feeding fish up to a staggering three and a bit pounds - yes three-pound (verified!) grayling. Now I have your interest.
I preened myself just a little to hear that my variation - The Sparkle Gnat was these anglers' second choice (they probably added this for my benefit!). Today, though, was not really a dry fly day.
Having described things thus far, I should add that both Andrew and Paul make their decisions on tactics and fly choice based on observation on the day. The water condition at the moment they are due to fish is the defining element.
Having seen the river, it was certainly `fining' down and clearing by the moment. Bugs - pink ones - were seen to be the order of the day. Glancing through their fly boxes, I noticed the usual villains - pink and orange bugs, Czech nymphs of one sort or another and various gold heads - Hare's Ears and so on.
Their set-ups? A l2ft leader, a Trout Pimp indicator and a pink bug on the point with a Hare's Ear above. The depth was set to about 10 feet. The cast, rather than in true close-quarter, under-the-rod tip style - of the Czechs.
This was more at range. The fly was cast upstream, allowing the current to grip and spiral the flies down in the water column while the indicator bobbed downstream in a dead drift.
Most of the casts were done at around three or so rod lengths out and were allowed to fish unchecked downstream for about 20 feet. Deeper water was the place.
After a few casts, Andrew slipped below Paul who was busy fishing the head riffle. He waded out into water that was about thigh deep and cast upstream. A few bobs, a stutter, a tremble and up came the rod tip and the water shimmered to the twist and jive of a 12-inch grayling.
Change Of Tactics
Both anglers continued down the stretch and gradually added to the tally of fish - all coming to the pink bug. Then something odd happened.
At around one o'clock a few smallish large dark olives (oxymoron, I know!) struggled to the surface, nudged their wings open and took to the winter sunshine. Then a few more, then more, not a huge hatch you understand but enough to have the fish looking at life differently.
Immediately, Andrew changed leaders from the single strand of 5lb breaking strain to a Fish Tech G3 fluorocarbon to a tapered 3lb point and Fulling Mill leader. Onto this he tied a size 18 olive CDC. As if by divine intervention, in the deep, slow run by the bridge tiny little rises began to appear. I pooh-poohed these rises as small fish not worth bothering with.
"It was a rise like that when my big fish took the gnat," interrupted Andrew. "Actually all my larger fish have made tiny rise forms like that." Admonished, I realised that you should never ever generalise when fly fishing.
Sadly it was not a big-fish day but we did manage a succession of smaller fish. No matter, it was proof of the effectiveness of small dry flies even in stained water andrew Added: "People do not realise that, even in high water. Yesterday for instance when the river was much higher and more coloured, grayling were rising quite happily. They have amazing eyesight and I am convinced they can see the fly in really coloured waters. Just think how well they take our flies towards nightfall.
"We have quite a few visiting French and Belgium anglers now. They like to fish dry flies - tiny little CDC patterns and dry black spiders. They do better than anyone on these patterns, light tippets and lines." Worth noting, I thought.
I quizzed Andrew on his choice of dry fly, what he uses apart from the Grifflths' Gnat and The Sparkle Gnat. He also makes certain he carries Tups in sizes 18 and 20 as well as sparse, lightly-dressed Hare's Ears and Klinkhammers in larger sizes.
He then outlined a very effective and, as far as I was aware, unique tactic on rivers - a stream washing line. This familiar style on stillwaters has been amended by the Severn anglers to have a largish (14) Klinkhammer on the point with two very small, 18 and 20, Hare's Ear emergers on the droppers. "Deadly," was all Andrew said. With the rain clouds billowing like great banks of bruised cotton wool over the surrounding hills and that shift of air that generally accompanies rain, the rises began to dwindle and I was keen to explore upstream. There are miles of water to wander about and fish and all can be had for just a few pounds. On we went. Abruptly, the whole river altered.
About a mile upstream of the bridge the river splits and abrades into stone and a current-etched series of runs and riffles. Great trout water but I wasn't convinced about the grayling, though. Yet there was something about a little backwater that had been rejuvenated by recent rain. It looked like a deepish channel that looked very promising indeed.
Having forsaken the camera in favour of the trusty 10ft 5-wt Sage. The river beckoned and looked ripe for a few swings down with the pink bug. A couple of swings through then that lovely subsurface thump as a grayling hit the bug sweeping downstream in the coiling current.
A lovely clean fish possibly never caught before and washed with the silver and lilac that is the grayling's hallmark. This together with sweeping crimson-edged, dappled sail-like dorsal fm.
Does life get much better than this? The three of us didn't think so.
