Llyn Du-bâch

Llyn Du-bâch from the wall at the lower end of the lake

With the second wave of COVID19 building and the possibility of lockdown being reimposed I have been exploring as many of the Cambrian Angling waters as time will allow. I had decided to give Llyn y Manod a try in late August and parked on the Manod high street. I was gearing up when a car pulled up and the driver, a young man in his 20’s, asked where I was fishing. I told him I planned to explore Llyn y Manod, to which we replied, “I wouldn’t bother unless you want to catch 4-6 inch fish. If you want to catch some nice sized trout then head up to Llyn Du-bâch”. I had toyed with the idea of heading up there later in the afternoon if time allowed so decided to reverse the order and fish Du-bâch, Dwr-oer and if time allowed, y Manod.

Heather and billberry grassland along the “sheep track” that follows Afon Du-bâch, joining the top of the first inclined plane to Llyn Du-bâch

There is a footpath down the side of 10 Manod Road, over a stile and you start the ascent of the first disused inclined railway line. At the top of this first line there was the option to take a footpath along Afon Du-bâch directly up to Llyn Du-bâch which I decided to take as I had planned to walk down it if I had ended the day up at Du-bâch. It wasn’t long before I regretted this decision. While this footpath is marked as a right of way on the OS maps it is little more than a sheep track that disappears and reappears through thick heather and bilberry leaving you thrashing through dense undergrowth growing over boulder scree covered in moss with many ankle twisting and leg breaking holes. While looking back down the heather coloured valley towards Manod was beautiful when there was a break in the weather, that didn’t make it any less arduous and I was glad I wasn’t ending the day coming down this path in low light as it had all the makings of a broken leg mountain rescue situation.

While on the subject of safety, in low cloud/mist this landscape was easy to get turned around in, even in good visibility spells there are loads of phantom trails made by the sheep which rapidly disappear and I was glad that I had a GPS with 1:25K OS maps loaded to navigate at several points during the day.

Llyn Du-bâch was worth the walk when I got there. This is a mid-elevation llyn (445 m elevation) that is comprised of two portions separated by a stone wall. The upper part of the lake is about 2 ha in size while the lower is ~1 ha. These are shallow lakes (average depth of 5m) fed by a catchment dominated by heather grassland and acid grassland. The water has a low alkalinity with a slight peat stain. The lower 2/3rds of the lower lake was full of grassy weed and small clumps of water lilies. I decided a floating line and dry flies was the best option, not least because there was a hatch of small brown gnats and the trout were occasionally rising to take them. I started with a red tag deer hair caddis pattern on the bob fly, a small pale brown jingler on the middle dropper and a small rusty red brown crane fly on the point.

I started off of the wall and worked a few clear weedless channels up the east bank. The east bank has a shallow angle and is comprised of gravel and sand with occasional clayey patches and can be waded. I was quickly into my first wild brownie but it was going to be one of those days when more slip the hook than end up in the net. The bushy caddis bob fly, which was attracting some attention, was too bulky for the smaller fish to get into their mouths and easy to eject once they realised it wasn’t what they thought. However, the larger fish weren’t playing ball either with several evading the net right at the crucial moment of netting them. The takes were hard and ferocious and the fight they put up very impressive for the size of the fish.

Wild brown trout from the lower section of
Ephemeroptera (Lake Olives – Cloeon simile?) and small brown gnats hatching on upper Llyn Du-bâch in the lee of the stone wall dividing the upper and lower sections
Ephemeroptera (Lake Olive – Cloeon simile?) hatch on upper Llyn Du-bâch in the lee of the stone wall dividing the upper and lower sections
Wild brown trout from the upper section of Llyn Du-bâch

The wind was blowing from the south east so fishing the west bank was going to be tricky but being up against the hillside seemed to have the deeper water. This yielded the first good sized brownie in the net taking the jingler. Having stepped into the water to land the fish I discovered the bottom is comprised of very sticky clay and getting stuck is a distinct possibility. The upper section of the lake looked less weedy and with the wind at my back managed to cast out to a feeding trout that took the crane fly and also came to the net following a good fight. I finished the session off with a further fish from the east side of the wall also on the jingler. It was in landing the second fish that I noticed a small hatch of olives was underway amongst the rocks from the wall that have fallen into the lake. This explained why the jingler, more of a pale brown f-fly with a red head and a squirrel fibre hackle to add lots of movement, was working.

Upper Llyn Du-bâch from the wall that separates the two sections

I decided to have a dabble on Dwr-oer on the walk out. The olives were hatching here too from amongst the rocks at the base of the wall. The odds weren’t in my favour, missing two fish, one of which hit the crane fly with some force that suggested it was a fair size. With no time to walk round to y Manod it was time to walk out. The walk down the old rail lines was a lot more pleasant than the walk in through the heather, although I did wish I had a “car gwyllt” used by the quarry workers to head home, often travelling at 50 mph, to add a little spice to the process.