A day out fly fishing on the beautiful Afon Llafar

Devastating, wet and windy weather has been a consistent theme over Wales since the beginning of February. In many parts of the country, rivers have burst their banks and flooded communities.

Fortunately, the Welsh Dee wasn’t as badly affected but it still reached a level of 3m and has been completely unfishable for three weeks.

Drier conditions provided an opportunity to fish Afon Llafar, a feeder stream into Bala Lake, for the first time; while the Welsh Dee was still running off. which I’d not fished before.

Tim decided to join me on this exploratory fishing trip because he needed to avoid the onset of ‘Cabin Fever’.

Fly fishing the Afon Llafar near Bala

As we approached the Afon Llafar from the car park at the top of the beat, we were pleased to see that it was up a few inches and running relatively clear.

The right bank is heavily tree-lined so we crossed over to the left bank to fish a couple of small pools.

The Afon Llafar is a narrow river (ca. 5m wide at most) with low overhanging trees on the far bank. This made covering the deeper water on the far bank challenging.

Tim fished down from the head of the pool with a team of nymphs, while I fished up towards him with a small nymph suspended under a dry fly (Klink & Dink).

After losing a few flies in the overhanging tree and no takes, I headed off downriver in search of some deeper, slower running pools. Leaving Tim to search through the pools with his nymphs.

Where the left bank became tree-lined and unfishable, I crossed over to the right bank and headed downriver. The river tumbles over bedrock for the next 200m and after a small bridge opens out into a deep pool, where the flow eased.

I fished up through this pool with the ‘Klink & Dink’ set-up but didn’t get a response. Therefore, I switched to a team of wet flies spaced 3ft apart on 3lbs copolymer (point: size 12, blue bling spider; middle dropper: size 14, black hopper; top dropper: size 14 pearl-butt Bloa).

Fishing the team of wet flies through the pool didn’t yield anything.

I walked downriver to the next pool, which I fished with the wet flies. Towards the tail of the pool, the line darted sideways and when I lifted the rod a grayling surfaced. 

It splashed on the surface a couple of times and threw the hook.

I fished on to the mouth of the Afon Llafar at Bala Lake but didn’t get anything or see any fish rise.

After admiring the view over Bala Lake, I went back to see how Tim had got on…

Unfortunately, he’d only caught trees!

Tim had seen a few olives hatching but nothing came up to intercept any of them.

Despite the lack of fish, we’d had a lovely fishing expedition on the Afon LlaIar; and I will plan another trip when the weather warms up.

Grayling fly fishing – Duncans Pool at Llangollen

On our way home we stopped off to fish the Duncans Pool on the Welsh Dee at Llangollen.

This river was still very high (1m @ Manley Hall) and coloured but there was a slack section of water close to the bank that was fishable. 

Tim fished this slack section with a team of nymphs and caught a couple of grayling on a pink squirmy wormy.

I fish through the pool with the wet flies but didn’t get any takes – I should have taken the time to switch over to fishing nymphs.

When the sun disappeared behind the hills the temperature started to drop quickly and we called it a day and headed off home.

Hopefully, there will be a prolonged spell of dry weather soon, which will allow us to get back to fly fishing on the Welsh Dee for brown trout.

Tight lines, Andrew

Day tickets to fish this beat of Afon Llafar can be obtained from Bala Angling Association. (NB. This was the case at the time of writing this article)