Monnow - 12/09/2010
Entry posted by Nicholas S
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The following day I made a slightly mad and last minute decision to drive over to Wales and fish the Monnow for the day. I had been mulling over a trip across the border to sample Wale’s delightful river fishing for a while and finally decided that today was the day. Two hours of driving later (it should have been considerably less but I took a ridiculous countryside ‘short-cut’ which turned out to be a huge mistake) and I had arrived at the Monnow and boy was I excited!
The river looked slightly high with a tinge of colour but still fishable. Without having any prior knowledge on the fishing I decided to take a gamble and start right in front of where I had parked and work my way upstream. The Monnow is a lovely river and considerably larger than the small streams that I frequent around Bath. This made it harder to deduce where the fish were likely to be lying and with no obvious surface activity I plumped for a couple of nymphs. It took me a while to get off the mark but soon enough I was into my first Monnow fish, a lovely Grayling probably just under half a pound. I continued making my way upstream picking off the odd fish here and there until I came across a long riffled section of deep powerful water that just screamed Grayling. Working my way up the far bank and fishing into the deeper water I was finding it difficult to get a bite. However, after changing one fly to a very heavy pink shrimp I had a ferocious bite and it was into a fish and that was really pulling hard in the fast water. The only way I could get a semblance of control was by lowering my rod tip into the water and attempting to gently ease the fish upstream and into the slower paced margins. Eventually I was beginning to gain the upper hand and slipped my net under a pristine Grayling that was just over 1.5lb. It wasn’t as large as I was anticipating but it had put up a magnificent fight in the fast water and I was really pleased to have got it in to the net.
By now the day was getting on so with miles of river still un-fished I decided to wonder upstream until I came across a nice looking stretch and then hopefully fish the evening rise. Well, the evening rise did happen but it was almost dark by that time and despite numerous Grayling rising repeatedly I couldn’t connect with a single one! It was a slightly frustrating end to the day but I had had an fantastic time on a new river learning a lot along the way.
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