PYRENEES FLY FISHING REPORT MAY 13th 2023

At present, the Alto Segre, Noguera Pallaresa and Alto Ter rivers are in good condition for fly trout fishing.

The best at the moment by level, flow is the Segre, followed by the upper Ter and the Noguera Pallaresa still too high to have acceptable fishing.

Despite the persistent droughts in the peninsula, the three rivers continue to have a good level of water due to the rains in the Pyrenees in recent weeks and due to the amount of water accumulated in the aquifers of the granitic and karstic rocks of the Pyrenees and pre-Pyrenees.

These levels will be maintained until July and then it will depend on the rains and storms that fall in the Pyrenees mountain range.

RIVER SEGRE (NICE LEVEL FOR NYMPHING)

So far the best of the three. Good water level due to the rains of the last few days. Trout are very active and bite mainly well-presented nymphs. It is still a bit early to fish exclusively with dry flies. The river water is a bit cold 14ºC and the water level varies between 4m3/sec in its highest stretch, after the junction with the Aravó river, to 15m3/sec at the junction with the Valira de Andorra tributary .

The waters present an acceptable turbidity throughout its 80km journey. The caddis flies begin to appear but it is still early and until June they will not be present in good numbers.

Until the month of July the river will present good to excellent conditions for fishing. Then it will depend on the rains and storms of the Pyrenees.

RIVER TER (HIGH TER) VERY NICE FOR DRIES AND NYMPHS ALL TECHNIQUES

This river has an acceptable flow for both dry fly and nymph and sight nymph fishing.

All the fish are active and at this moment, the Ter and its tributary the Freser have acceptable and very good flows for fishing, due to the recent rains in the two Pyrenean valleys.

They are very well fished with small mayflies and nymphs with fine tippets. At the moment it rains moderately in the two valleys and it is foreseeable that the rains will continue for the next two weeks. If the rains continue in June and August as is normal in these valleys of the Pyrenees, fishing will continue to be good. These stretches of river do not have the amount of trout from the Segre or Noguera pallaresa, but zebra trout of all sizes that enter no matter how large they are to dry flies. It’s very interesting.

The river Ter has a flow of 2m3/sec and at the junction with the tributary Freser 4m3/sec. The average temperature of the water is 14ºC.

RIVER NOGUERA PALLARESA (TOO MUCH WATER, MUST WAIT)

The Noguera Pallaresa has too high a flow to still be well fished, because it still has a lot of melted snow water. You have to wait a few weeks for it to have a fly-fishable flow. At times it is possible to fish with heavily weighted nymphs but the fishing is unsuccessful. It has a flow between 20m3/sec and 30m3/sec in the lowest part and the water temperature is 13ºC on average.

From June the trout will eat dry flies and sedges but for the moment the river is practically unfisheable, only few hours could try with Czech nymphing. From the next 3 weeks, my advice is to wait because there are to much water and also is very dangerous for wading. The river have a very dangerous flow. Better to fish small tributaries.

The Cardós tributary is good for dry fly and nymph and sight nymph fishing. The Vallferrera river still has too high a flow but you can fish with nymphs.

In short, this beautiful river still needs a few weeks to fish in it with an adequate flow, that is, when it takes an average of 8m3/sec to a maximum of 15 or 17m3/sec when it receives the daily flood of high mountain lakes from the pyrenees.

The flow will be good even in the most critical time of summer and the appearance of rains and storms is to be expected during the summer.

~ Carles V.