Species

Brown Trout

The upper Wye holds a reasonable head of wild browns, typically in the eight ounces to one and a quarter pound range with the odd larger fish. A light stocking each year supplements this head of fish. These brown trout are obtained locally and range from 10oz to one pound. The stocked fish settle in quickly and grow well, with plenty of two pound and several three to four pound fish taken annually. Infrequently, even larger fish are taken, the largest being an exceptional fish of 12lb 5oz in May 2000. Many trout can be seen from the high banks.

Fish fall to most methods, though you can leave your lure boxes at home. Dries and emergers from 12–20s fished upstream, upstream nymphs, wets up and across or down and across, Czech nymphs or gold heads will all produce fish. Best results come to imitative or suggestive patterns. Most importantly, fish flies in which you have confidence and cover the water.

Hatches of flies can be experienced season long, with olives, stone-flies, sedges and midges. Terrestrials also play their part, especially along the more overgrown stretches.

Grayling

The cream of the fishing on the Glaslyn waters is for grayling, with free rising fish throughout the beats. The typical fish is between one and one and a half pound. Most weeks see fish over two pounds landed, with fish of around three pounds taken most seasons - large grayling by anyone’s standards.

As with trout, many methods produce fish, with the addition of traditional grayling flies such as the treakle parkin or red tag during the winter months to those outlined above for trout.

Such is the quality of grayling fishing at Glaslyn that a multi-page article appeared in Trout and Salmon a few years ago, which is available to read here by kind permission of Trout and Salmon magazine.

Salmon

Given what has been stated in the introduction regarding the deterioration in salmon runs, under the right conditions, salmon are still taken from the Wye in reasonable numbers, though fewer in the upper reaches. In the summer months after a spate of one foot or more, salmon can be taken at Glaslyn, though the autumn provides the best chance. Fish hold at the heads of the pools in the higher water, settling in the body of the pools as the water falls back to summer level. It is while the fish are in the head of the pools that they are more likely to be taken, often right up at the broken water of the rocky runs. Once the fish fall back, they become increasingly more difficult to tempt until the next rise in levels.

The Wye is predominantly a spring river with some summer grilse. Typical salmon are in the 6–14lb range with high teens and low twenties sometimes encountered. Fish taken in the autumn will have been in the river for some time and are often coloured. These fish should be handled with care and safely returned.

Standard shrimp and hair wing salmon patterns take fish, typically on 8s and 10s. In high water, larger flies and tube flies come into their own. Given the amber tinge on the waters of the upper Wye, flies containing orange, or those with a touch of yellow often do well.

Low numbers of salmon have been caught at Glaslyn in recent seasons, largely due to light fishing effort. 2008 was the best of recent seasons with 14 salmon falling to four rods in the last two weeks of the season, including, on two days, three fish taken by one rod in one day.

Although byelaws allow spinning during periods of the Wye season, a fly only rule applies throughout the season on all waters fishable via the Glaslyn Estate.