Anglesey

In 1974-75 I lived in Anglesey, near Caergeilliog. There are a bunch of lakes near here clustered around the airfield at Valley, which provided most of my formative fishing experience. This page is dedicated to those lakes and small local stream where I fished for trout and a few other things and Rhyd y Gari where I started my sea fishing.

The lakes are (mostly) situated to the North of Vally airfield on a bit of moorland - this consisting of a mixture of bog, reeds, outcrops of gray rock, the occasional bit of grass you could walk on (if you were careful), and sheep. It was a little bleak and cutting across this ground on a misty day was a wet and occasionally spooky business.

Even then, given the history the island is steeped in, it was hard not to think of how the land must have looked 2 thousand years ago. There is for me little romanticism associated with that. The Bronze and Iron ages were brutal and bloody. Life was hard, cheap and short. Far removed from the vision of 'Celtic Utopia' some folk peddle.

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• Whitehouse
• Llyn Cerrig Bach
• Llyn Carnau
• "Trout Stream"
• Llyn Penrhyn
• Rhyd y Gari, Cymyran (sea)
• The Bridge (Whitehouse)

Whitehouse Lake:

Whitehouse lake is to the West of Llyn Penryn and North of Lyn Cerrig Bach. I have no idea whether that is the proper name and always believed it to be named after a house on the high ground of "the Point", which was (wait for it) white. It was occupied then, although I never saw anyone. The lake is roughly "Y" shaped (see the sketch) and one of the more interesting places I have ever fished. When fished there in 1974-75 there were 4 types of fish in it. Perch, roach, Rudd and Eels. That was it. There were no trout in this lake (although one or two of the others were rumoured to have a few).

The lake was surrounded by high ground on the South sides and this sheltered it form the prevailing winds well and the calm water and still air often gave the South end on the lake an ethereal quality. This was still there went I visited in 1991 and the pictures show just how still the water was. The same lily pads in the same places as well. The White House was sadly derelict and a small and less than new caravan was parked on the slope.

I fished there twice in the depths of Winter, once alone (my first trip in the UK), with absolutely no result, which given my complete inexperience was not a big surprise and once with a school friend, who caught one perch of about 1lb on a spinner and that was it for both of us.

I had fallen in with in with another fisheryouth on the camp. Obviously I am not going to name him, but I will tell you his reel had a "bale alarm" and a "latchet". Unlike mine which was equipped with the usual "Bale Arm" and "Ratchet". I next went to Whitehouse in the Spring, when the weather had warmed up and after the first go at Trout stream (with the aforementioned fisheryouth). I certainly recall catching a few perch in the 3-4 ounce bracket, simply float fishing worms in mid water (plumb the depth? Why would you do that then, eh?), on one side of "the point".

Same 7ft pool cue and Intrepid reel and probably (although not definitely) a porcupine quill float. For months into the spring and summer we went fishing more or less every day, after school during term. Get home, dig worms, have tea, go fishing.

Typically we would fish in 1 or 2 mains areas. These were driven purely by convenience. "The Point" gave good access to the water for 2 people and "the beach" ditto. You could fish off the wall, good for Rudd, but no so good for landing them. Off the point was a narrow channel of deeper water and with hindsight this was the main route between two of the larger areas of water in the lake. Certainly the rock that we perched on to fish, continued down into the water, giving the impression of a steeply cut channel.

You could fish from opposite the point and the western bank but the swims were water logged and only really usable in high summer. Which we did sometimes.

There were other lakes but we nearly always went to Whitehouse. During the spring this was because of the explosion in the perch population, the like of which I have never experienced before or since. In an evenings fishing you could catch 80 fish. All 1-2 ounces, all on worm. Sometimes on the same worm. It was ludicrous really. But a good way to spend the evening and in those days with a keep net, quite a thing to lift the net at the end of the evening and have 150+ perch in the net (both lots together). Extraordinary really. Ideal fishing for the "hard of angling" certainly and I would claim to be in that category in those days.

Even we eventually would tire of this - experiments to catch perch on anything else were carried out. We caught perch on:

Bare gold hooks. Orange and Black caterpillars. Every sort of insect we could catch and put on a hook. silver paper, wrapped onto the hook and jigged under the rod tip. Leaves threaded onto hooks to make simple lures, which were then pulled from side to side in front of you. Feathers tied on the hook as before. They all worked.

Eventually when real boredom set in we would put worms on and roam the banks looking for fish rising and casting a small float (I made a porcupine quill self cocking with solder wire around the base) and 12 inches of shot less line, at the rise. The result was nearly always a small Rudd, a few oz's only, bright gold, with bright red fins. Very occasionally this Rudd would be over 0.5lb and fish like that were worth to me at least 80 small perch. Glorious fish, with bright scales and no sign of being caught before. Even then I knew these were special. I have loved Rudd ever since, but seldom have seen such good fish (these days few lakes seem to have many). On the rare occasions we got hold of maggots (mostly by getting a fish head and burying it in the garden for a week then sifting the soil for a few dozen), you could catch roach almost to order, by fishing further from the bank (past the ravenous hordes of perchlings) and more or less on the bottom. Pound roach were not unusual and looking back there must have been many better...if I caught 6 roach in an evening I thought I was doing really well. Anyone could catch small perch...roach seemed classier to our inexperienced eyes. Summer evenings here were almost without failure. The weather was seldom bad and the fish always biting it seemed - the lake was sheltered and most evenings were calm and cool, with little movement on the water. In many respects idyllic.

Llyn Cerrig Bach*

The "Lake of Little Stones" is famous for the large haul of Celtic artifacts, found when the RAF Valley runway was constructed. The lake as it stood in 1974 then was perhaps 2-3 acres, with deep reed beds around it, that made fishing there awkward if you didn't have waders or a periscope. We didn't.

On the South side however there was one small swim, where an outcrop of the local gray rock gave you a vantage point 2-3 feet above the water and clear of the reed growth and also access to 4-6 feet of water right off the bank. This was a swim I went to many times and usually when fishing on my own, as there was little space for anyone else. The first time I went there was an evening when I was uncharacteristically, on my own.

I put on a small "bobber" type float, actually the top one in the picture. I have a sneaking suspicion it might (still, technically) belong to my brother...anyhoo, I actually checked the depth and discovered 5-6 feet of water, which was awkward for a small rod. I persevered and after a while got the "bob...bob...bob-bob...plunge" of a perch and discovered a few things. The first was that the extra length of line, gave the fish room to run - the second thing being that this was no bad thing. The third thing is that perch work very hard to stay at the depth they're at (this is because it is hard for them to adjust the amount of air in their swim bladder, not that I knew that at the time). So you get a jagging and dogged resistance to being hauled upward. The fourth thing was (and bear in mind all the perch I have caught so far have come so far from one lake), the colour. I was presented with a 4-5 ounce fish (bigger than usual) and unlike it's Whitehouse cousins, this was a very dark green colour, perhaps a factor of peatier water. Until the fish was less than a foot from the top, you couldn't see it. Several other fish followed, in similar fashion, jagging up from the deep, with the same dark green colour.

Subsequently, I refined my rig for this little swim. With the float to hook length being about a (7 foot) rod length, I made a small slider float out of a little antenna I had (read it in a book I expect). I used some thin copper wire wound around a needle to make the slider ring and used mono for a stop knot. The ring was whipped onto the body of the float, near the top. It worked very well and casting not being a problem, it eased the issues of the depth verses my rod - and made the session on this little swim more fun for being tackled with a solution of my own making. Great stuff.

I cannot believe it's 30 years since I fished here. Wow.

*This is what we knew it as. The plaque there agrees. The existing OS map is ambiguous. Descriptions like the link above suggest otherwise also. I presume the landscape has altered somewhat since the runway was built. It certainly has since the Iron Age...as far as I can tell the original lake surrounded Craig Carnau and this lake and what we called "Carnau Lake" were all part of the "original" Llyn Cerrig Bach.

New Method

To the south of Llyn Cerrig Bach is a small lake/pond, surrounded by reeds, with a couple of fishable swims on the North bank. On one windy day (actually it was always windy, it's just a question of degree), a man fishing there showed me how to float ledger - that's the method he was using and in the teeth of a very brisk wind, was reliably getting bites and hitting the fish. I had been on my usual tucked away swim on the south bank of Llyn Cerrig Bach and the wind was blowing over my head from behind me and over the patch of water I was fishing, so the wind hadn't to that point been an issue. The usual "caught anything" conversation turned to methods and I got to learn a new one. I tried it out and it worked.

This is how it works: I probably used a porcupine quill the first time I tried it (I had very little else). This method worked best for me with a loaded "self cocking" float and ideally with an antennae ( I used solder wire to do the loading) and the smallest ledger weight that worked for the distance. Stop shot on the hook side of the weight.

It helps to keep the rod tip (just) under the water as well. All in all, in some applications and especially in high winds, it worked rather well. If you remember the 3 uses of a float, then this is a good way to use one more often...

"Trout Stream"

The first place in the UK I ever caught a fish was "Trout Stream".

"Trout Stream" is in reality the top end of "Afon Crigyll" which crosses the road between LLanfihangel and Bryngwran, about half way between the two places. I would say this is about 4 miles from where the Crigyll joins the sea at Rhosneigr.

It was a stream and it did have trout in it. Fair enough really.

Essentially it was a small stream 6 foot wide at the most - the picture above shows the view North from the road. The stream ran under the lane, from the north side and about 20-30 yards from the road did a right-angled turn to the east - this bend is obscured on this picture by the bushes which were not there when we were.

This was the interesting bit from a fishing perspective. About 15 feet from the bend, the stream ran through a stone built culvert that was about 2 feet across. This funneling of water had caused a pool to be excavated below, with some colour and depth of water (about 2 feet maybe). Running off to one side (the North) was a large puddle that was a combination of a small tributary or ditch with the sort of trampled area you get where cows regularly come to water (a 'cowdrink'). The far side of the stream downstream of this pool was covered with bushes and higher ground, giving this small pool, probably no more than 8 x 5 feet, an enclosed feeling.

Being only my third fishing first trip (ever), I knew nothing about fishing really (still don't), but my companion said all I needed was a small shot, and a hook and worm, you cast (or "drop") in your bait and waited. I tried with no success for ages (well 5 minutes) and hit upon the idea of dropping the bait into the culvert. As soon as the bait cleared the culvert - a bite - and yanked out of the rushing water was a sea trout, no more that 6-8 ounces - my first rod caught fish! I should explain that I had a 7 foot solid fibre-glass rod with a 2.5lb test curve and an "Intrepid Challenger" reel with 3lb line. When I say "yanked" what happened was the fish belted downstream until the fixed bit of line coupled with the fishes momentum, caused it to leave the water by itself and I then swung it in my direction. I have a clear memory of the mauve/silver base colour with the bright spots on the flanks (I assume it was a sea trout).

In the next half an hour or so I caught a flounder and another sea-trout (as expertly played as the first), all received with grateful thanks, and feverish excitement. All were returned to the water. Years later, the good fortune of catching 2 fresh run sea trout as my introduction to fishing in the UK dawned on me and also the oddity of flounders (caught regularly here), 3 miles from the sea (as the crow flew, never mind the actual distance). They seemed quite at home, confirmed by the regular sighting of "postage stamp" flatties, suggesting a breeding population in residence - in defiance of flounder's known breeding habits.

Further visits to this small, but perfectly formed venue, revealed perch, brown trout (2oz a monster fish) and eels. To be fair, this little swim would seldom give up more than 3 fish of any type on one session and 3 fish was a good catch. Perch were usually to be found lurking in the "puddle" area, with eels omnipresent.

On one memorable occasion I visited during the spring run of eels, dozens and dozens of bootlace sized eels making their way upstream. An extraordinary sight.

No subsequent visit ever really matched up to the magic of that first trip though, whatever the catch was.

While on business in Anglesey in 1991, I revisited the spot with some of the same feeling of excitement of my first visit - and discovered the stream still there, nominally, with the much cherished and quite possible unique spot, now the corner of a new golf course. Saddened I returned to my hotel - and lest you think me all sentimental, the sadness was in most part due to the fact that I didn't have any fishing tackle with me (oh yes I would have...).

"Llyn Penrhyn"

Llyn Penryhn, means 'lake with the headland' more or less (penrhyn (n.) cape, headland, promontory, naze) and a look at the map will give you a clue why. The Eastern bank was covered with a dense bed of reeds, some 20 yards thick in places, with swims that were cut into the reed beds. To get close to any fish you needed to wade into the water between the reeds - the water was shallow and sloped gently, so you could with only wellies on, wade 20 yards from the edge to clear water. You still needed to cast a distance, but you could balance your rod on a rest and an iron frame sticking out of the water and ledger. I only tried this once and caught several good perch around the pound mark using, I think, reeds hanging on the line as a bite indicator but my short rod was not really up to the task. Experience wonders whether quietly fishing at the edge of the reeds might have been as productive...

I also fished once on a rock shelf behind the officers quarters, with no result, but I recall a warm rock and warm sun and shallow water and finding some split-shot on the rock, which showed I was not alone in the idea of it being a good place to try. I wonder, sitting here, whether a better spot was on the headland itself, with the possibility of some depth of water near the bank.

Buildings alongside Llyn Penrhyn

This excellent picture, which captures the atmosphere of the lake, appears to have been taken at almost the spot I ledger-fished from and is © Copyright Nigel Williams and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Carnau Lake

This lake is to the North of Craig Carnau itself and lies in the lee of the small hill.

The whole lake is behind the hill, which put the South bank in shade and shadow and gave that side of the lake a calm air and even on the brightest days, pools of shadow and calm dark water. I have mentioned the atmosphere on this clutch of waters before and while not exactly Stygian gloom, it certainly had a disconnected and slightly ethereal feel.

The lake is narrow and our fishing was concentrated on the two ends. The west end where the lake narrowed to a reed covered exit stream had some depth of water and was often clear enough to see perch mid-water at the edge of a smaller reed patch some 5 yard from where the water exited among yet more reeds. This was where the small head of sea trout that frequented the lake gained entrance, but although they existed, they were so infrequently caught that a trout fishing license was not considered mandatory for the lake, (unlike Trawfyll).

At this western end we caught many perch, of a slight larger average size than in White house and I cannot recall catching larger than about 4 ounces, but seldom less. Like all of the lakes there were eels, but there seemed to be more here than in the other lakes and any worm left on the bottom for 15 minutes, would tend to get the "little eel" bite thing. This is when they apparently insinuate themselves around the bait without actually moving it - often the float dips a quarter inch and stays there...

At the Eastern end the water narrowed into a large reed bed which continued into a thin channel of weedy water that connected under the road to Llyn Cerrig, (a similar path also connected Llyn Cerrig Bach to Whitehouse). This reed bed had various little inlets and bays with paths snaking around the banks in among the reeds. This was interesting - there were several good spots in here, but again the catch seemed to be limited to 4 ounce perch - except for the one time.

The camp angling club had introduced a few tench and carp into Llyn Carnau which promptly disappeared of the radar. About one a year was caught. I know this, because fishing in the reeds at the eastern end, I rolled up to a swim, dropped in the by now inevitable porcupine quill and it went straight under. Now, as previously hinted at, I have a seven foot 2.5lb test curve rod and 3 lb line. The landing method was to hoist out the fish. That was it. We had no net anyway. I hoisted. A large brownish lump appeared and was placed on the bank. Someone (I forget who) went off for scales and on weighing the tench was found to be 1.5lb. That was my first tench, the only one I caught until a small bag on the Dyke years later.

I did think it was 2.5lb, but on reflection with a 3lb line and a good blood knot (I was careful with knots even then, well OK then I was a Scout) I think a 2.5lb fish might have not "hoisted" that well... I subsequently found out that had I declared it I would have won the tench cup for the year. It never occurred to me 1.5lb tench would win anything. Drat.

I've caught hundreds of tench since, but still get excited about that thump on the line...

The Bridge

The top of Whitehouse Lake narrows despite the high ground on the west and low flat marsh on the east side. This top channel connected to Llyn Dinas and was an area we never fished. One day though I took it into my head to explore this unfished part, I cannot remember why. In the late spring I picked my way across the marsh, which on a clear day looked like any rough damp pasture, but on a misty one conjured up images of the spectral and monstrous hounds. Very flat bits of this ground were best treated with deep suspicion as thin turf hid deep water or mud. Where the lake necked there was a line of scrubby trees on either side of the channel. On reaching them it was clear that access to the water was limited, but on making my way a few yards 'upstream' as it were, I came across a bridge.

When I say 'bridge', you probably have conjured up images of an ancient stone arch, thick with old moss. This was simply 2 large girders that on the far side were embedded in a concrete block with a manhole cover, which disappeared into the bright green moss of the bank on the near side, carrying the services it was there to support. But, as far as I was concerned, a bridge. I edged across the cold scabby iron over the narrow channel of water. It was perhaps 8-10 feet wide, was almost covered with a tunnel of branches and the water colour had grey-green depths, which hinted at large perch of above the normal stamp. It was a magical spot for me and I spent some time watching the water, although nothing stirred. If there was a flow it was not apparent. The overhung green translucent calm, smell of the marshy ground and the isolation combined to give a heady mixture of signals that yelled 'fish here'. Easy for a 14 year old with the fever already deeply embedded, to imagine solid and dark perch jagging up from deep water, after pouncing on the offered worm. I determined to fish at the next opportunity.

But circumstances were against me, as our posting was up and we moved away in late '74. After the move, battling the change from almost daily fishing to almost none, I would set up my 7 foot rod, with the little slider float I'd made and think of the monsters by the bridge and it was even in my mind when a couple of years later, I received a fibreglass car aerial, perhaps 5 feet long and I made a simple one handed rod with it, with a cork handle, ideal for small spaces where even 7ft rods might clash with the undergrowth (this was later enthusiastically bought by a friend, which I regret). The bridge leapt unbidden into my thoughts the other morning, while I lay abed listening to the rain and wondering if I might get out for a 'fix'. I still want to give it a try. One day.