Russell Owen Enjoys His First Day Out With The Welsh Hawks Team.

I have been eagerly waiting for the first day out with the rest of the lads who I fish with in the Welsh Hawks.

Although the forecast wasn’t great for our first day out on Clywedog with rain most of the day and a moderate breeze but I wanted to try out some of the new Superflo tip lines from Airflo.

The fish at Clywedog are normally pretty high in the water so my set up was 10ft Airflo superstick comp special , the line I choose was the new 12ft superflo fast tip. The old previous model was a ridge line and I had a bad experience with this line at RUTLAND in a final a few years ago although I managed 16 fish and got top rod on the day it had worn away the skin on my line finger but suppose a small price to pay, but after that I wasn’t fond of that line at all! So today was perhaps a chance to banish that memory.

Down at the business end I went for Candy boobie with sunburst throat , my green head corm on the middle and a Black blob on top dropper. My boat partner for the day was fellow Welsh Hawks Wayne Jones we started the day with fairly light winds and a steady drizzle.

Immediately on casting the new 12ft fast tip it felt better than the old model with a slightly thinner profile on the running line and as is the standard with Airflo lines a joy to cast. When fishing this method I always find that as soon as the flies land on the water give them 2 good arm length pulls this severs 2 purposes 1 it straightens everything out and puts you in direct contact with your flies secondly that little plop and rush away will often draw a fish in if it’s within 10-15ft of your fly then with the rod tip about 12inch off the water start a figure of 8 retrieve this is when so many takes comeand with the low stretch of the fly line it locks up!

During the first hour I managed around 8 fish to this method in the Eblid basin cages area mostly to the Candy boobie and a couple on the corm. Wayne has taken about 5 fishing on a di 5 trying unsuccessfully to get one of Clywedog bigger inhabitants!

With recent reports of lots of fish being caught from Dinas point down towards the bottom end of lake we thought we’d take a look although I feared the wind might put a dampener on this we motored to the yacht club basin where there were around 10 boats scattered around and the wind was lighter here .

I switched to dries as I normally do!

So many times I’m asked about leader material for dries my preferred material is G3 6lb straight through with 3 turn water knot for droppers (6inch )

On the point a green butt quill cdc shuttlecock, middle dropper my trusted brown bits and top dropper the current fish magnet orange foam uv hogg daddy.

We drifted along the shore from Dinas point around a couple of points I took one old fish on the shuttlecock but the wind was strengthening the further we went down the shore so we headed back to the calmer water more suitable to the dries. (At lunch Gaz reported 30 + fish with pulling tactics at bwlch y gle )

We had another 6 fish on the dries before a Social distanced lunch back at the lodge.

Afternoon session I was keen to get up the lake especially to the Llwyd, brach y ffedew area as this has been fishing very well to surface sport although it would be difficult with today’s conditions.

We headed up and stopped off at the willows area where it was relatively calm and a few fish moving this felt more like what I had hoped for we took about 4 fish here Wayne got broke off here on the Hogg daddy ( the fish took him by surprise and Wayne let him have it no contest ! snap )

I got a beautiful brownie here having moved twice with fins showing he duly obliged by taking my shuttlecock with total confidence.

Our next stop was mouth of the Llwyd , an area I like because food often gets trapped here and the fish mill around following it with slicks running the shore down into Braichy ffedew we spend a couple of hrs here catching steady right down into Braich.

Wayne was keen to try in the Llwyd this arm has a very pronounced river bed and the fish will often run deeper into this contour and so is the case at the moment Wayne switches back to the di 5 here and catches almost at will even double ups I was to lazy to change and worked a little harder with the fast tip to catch 3! Much to Wayne’s displeasure I’m getting board fast here and want to go back to willows!

The wind had strengthened a little and the only calm water is around the Gronwen bay where we take another 2 fish on the dries.

Back to the cages area where to our great surprise we find the other 2 boats the fish here love the dries as they’ve seen all the colours and snakes you could imagine and we Finnish with a flurry of 6 fish in 15 min before our first team day of the year is over.