Llyn Conglog

Following my unsuccessful trip to Llynnau Barlwyd I stopped at Llyn Ffrid-y-bwlch to finish the day on a high and met a club member that told me about a back way up to Llyn Conglog from Crimea Pass on the A470. It was not a path marked on an OS map so I had not considered this approach before. Having studied Google and Bing (which has better quality) satellite imagery sure enough there was a clearly defined path visible and all of that land was classed as access land so it was permissible to walk that route. The route was much shorter (~3km) and had much less elevation gain than the options of walking in from Tan-y-grisau past Llyn Cwmorthin or from Nantmor past Llyn’s Llagi and y Adar. It was kinda within my ability to walk this route whereas the other options were all too extreme and consequently I had not fished at Llyn Conglog before. Llyn Conglog with the possibility of a wild 4lb brownie has long been on my To Fish list but never been within my walking range.

Llyn Conglog is a mid-elevation lake at just over 600m altitude. It is ~7.5ha in size with a catchment dominated by bog, acid grassland, heather grassland and heather. The margins have plenty of wadable sections however, the lake has plenty of deeper water being on average ~7m deep.

 

While the path is pretty clear much of the time, this is no place to muck about if the weather is not bright and sunny. I recorded the following route, downloadable from Viewranger, using GPS for when bad weather reduces visibility and you want to reduce the chances of getting turned around in the uplands and taking a sheep or false trail, of which there are plenty. The path is fairly good on the whole and there is one place where a bit of light scrambling is required. The view out over Afon Lledr valley bathed in the sunlight was simply astounding. There are few places in the UK where you get the feeling of being alone in a vast natural setting and this was one of those times. It reminded me of my spiritual home in the Drakensberg and really fed my soul.

 

The walk in took me 1.75 hours which was longer than the 1hr the club member had suggested. When I reached the lake it was worth the walk and I couldn’t wait to setup and get fishing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone with a single spinner fisherman on the opposite bank trawling the lake. It was peaceful and quiet with the occasional sound of a splash from a trout aggressively surface feeding and the occasional wheee of the spinner flying through the air. The sun had got the insect life moving and the water was a rich broth of trout food items. Midges and gnats of varying sizes were hatching and getting caught in the surface film. Likewise loads of terrestrials were also getting blown onto the water by the occasional light breeze including shield bugs, craneflies, wasps and flies. 

 

It was one of those days when you know before you set off that it would likely be short on success given it was very bright with a cold northerly wind blowing, although there was little in the way of a breeze up there to create a ripple. This was likely the last day to fish before the end of the season, which closes officially on the 30th September for the low lying Llyns and the 15th October for the higher altitude Llyns, so I simply had to go. I soaked up the autumn sun and tried a whole raft of dry fly and then wet fly tactics but nothing was working, not even a knock despite casting well and placing the fly in areas where I had observed surface feeding. I was glad that I had worn my thigh waders as large sections of the bank are steep and unfishable but wadeable with a shallow 2-4m wide rim of slate shards between the edge of the lake and deeper water. This slate was covered in green algae which made it slipperier than ice but manageable with slow careful boot placement.

I ended the day fishless but I had a blast and can’t wait to return next year. This is  a very special place and high on my list of places to fish in 2021. The walk out took me 1.25 hours. Next time I will bring two walking sticks as it was very muddy and slippery in parts. Roll on 2021 which will hopefully be COVID free and we can get a full season of fishing in. Me thinks I am going to have to get some warm waders and try grayling fishing to extend my season into the early winter 🙂

Tight Lines

Greg