TR: Test & Wales Clave 2010

By request of John Russel.

It was a long time since I last wrote a TR on ROFF, mostly because
life has found many ways to keep me too busy to spend much time on
forums. But, here goes.

A short TR on the 4th River Test clave, from my perspective.
We, my son Johannes, myself and Vaughan Hurry, arrived at Heathrow
about 45 minutes before Bosse, Björn and PeO (all from Sweden), and as
soon as we were all gathered we set off to the car rental to pick our
rides up.
After an uneventful drive to Wherwell, I had dreaded the first five
minutes out from Heathrow, they do after all drive on the wrong side
of the road as opposed to the right, we found that there were new
owners of the White Lion Pub, where we were supposed to stay, but also
that they had made small improvements to the accommodations since last
time, extra heating and such.
First dinner was had at the White Lion and it was evident that the
accommodations weren't the only improvement. The food was actually
good this year, and gone from the menu was the "Spotted Dick", among
other things.
At breakfast the next day, we met up with Jerome Philipon (The Leaping
Frog), whom I must say had everything well arranged, as always, and we
set off to meet up with the river keeper. From here on I suspect our
experiences differ somewhat. Oh, I almost forgot, seems I missed out
on entertainment from a couple of Irish troubadours as I went to bed a
little too early the first night.
I spent my entire first day not making more than 20 casts, trying to
coach Johannes on the finer details of upstream nymph fishing. As a
result I didn't catch anything, but Johannes was close to catching
two. In any case he did hook his first ever fish on an upstream fished
nymph. The first day was finished at The Mayfly Inn, where we had a
particularly good Venison dinner, and where Jerome was presented with
a combined 40th birthday and thank you gift, a very nice knife made by
Carl-Michael Almquist (Four times Swedish Utility Knife maker
Champion) and blade by Roger Bergh (World renowned Utility Knife Blade
maker).
The second day I decided to start fishing a little more serious, still
hoping that Johannes would catch a fish. The morning was slow, but
after about an hour I hooked into my first fish, and about 45 minutes
later I had caught and released three trout and one grayling, at which
point I more or less stopped fishing again and instead acted as fish
spotter for Johannes. By lunch he still hadn't caught anything and we
decided to join Jerome and the others for the now more or less
traditional Foie Gras lunch, which this year was better than ever.
Thanks Jerome.
The afternoon was again spent spotting fish for Johannes, and for
company we had Bosse. Luckily as it would turn out, since he had
brought a camera with him. I again didn't manage more than about 20
casts, but was happily rewarded when Johannes caught, landed and
released his first ever Test trout. This felt especially good since we
were going to Wales the day after and I knew Johannes would not feel
any pressure.
The second day was at an end and we had a long drive before us. I wish
I could say that this drive was as uneventful as the first, but Jerome
drove like he had stolen his car, my personal opinion, and kept
changing lanes in rapid succession. Was he perhaps trying to loose me?
Anyway, once at the B&B outside Erwood we went to a pub and had
dinner. By now I figure we were all so tired that most of us were
looking forward to bed.
The third day was spent at a beautiful stretch of the Wye. The fishing
was as I expected very hard and none of us managed to land any fish. I
suspect mostly due to the fact that even though we had excellent
weather it had been very cold for a long time.
Late that evening we found ourselves at an Indian restaurant, where I
damn near killed all Johannes taste buds by letting him have a taste
of some of my food. It was spicy, to say the least, and he was not
happy with me.
The fourth day will go down in my memory as one of the few days I
actually felt envy towards a fellow fly fisherman. Vaughan, who
managed to catch a trout on a dry fly, after having had the luck of
sitting by a pool as a mini hatch took place, at what must be one of
the prettiest streams I have ever had the pleasure to visit, the
Irfon. I would have loved to catch at least one fish in that water,
but again, it had been extremely cold recently, for Wales that is.
The Irfon reminded me of some of the streams I saw in New Zeeland,
extremely clear water with fine gravel bed and the occasional solid
rock, twisting its way in a valley surrounded by high hills and small
mountains, with high trees along the banks. This river, or creek by my
standards, was for me the essence of how a fly fishing stream should
look like, and had I brought my camera I could have taken more than
one picture suitable as cover for any fly fishing magazine. Just
beautiful. No fish caught, but I will definitely go back another
spring.
The stretches we fished were Llanfechan but also Cefnllysgwynne at the
Irfon, and Ty-Newydd and Pwll-y-Faedda at the Wye. All of us caught
fish and all the fish was released.

/Roger Ohlund