Around midday I ventured to the river Neath near to my home in the company of my fishing partner Malf Thomas, We decided to fish a stretch that we don’t normally fish and that decision certainly paid off! After a walk of about a mile or so we dropped down onto the river bank by a promising looking spot and straight away saw a couple of fish rising.
Malf had the first hit but the large brownie quickly threw the hook, try as we might we couldn’t get any more interest in our flies even after taking a coffee break to rest the pool.
We made our way upstream for a while and although we saw plenty of fishy looking water we saw no sign of any rises despite there being a hatch on. So we agreed to go back to the first pool we fished and have a try there again.
Although there were a few rises happening there was not much activity until one fish started feeding at the top of the pool just after Malf had set down his rod. I took full advantage of this and moved to the top of the pool for the obligatory last couple of casts before heading for home. I’m glad I did, as after a few casts with no interest up came a trout and took my size 18 adams and the fight was on! After a ten minute fight using my Greys 7′ #2 I finally got my best river brownie into the net.
Estimated at around the 4lb mark and safely released to catch again!
A fine test for the rod as previously the biggest I’d caught on it was only about 1lb.