A report on the Cain by the Wild Trout Trust for the SRT can be downloaded here.

Here’s a message we received from Jeremy Schrecker a former local angler on the Afon Cain -

It amazed me as a boy how such a small stream could sustain such a large trout and grayling population. I started fishing with a worm at age 9 on the Llanfyllin stretch in 1971. By 1973 I was fly fishing it. Shoals of 25 or more grayling inhabited the river as far up as Bodfach to the confluence of the two streams, huge numbers down at Pentre and Green hall, chub also present here. Trout abounded in every nook and cranny, and outnumbered the grayling in the Llanfyllin stretch, even the odd pike was present. One local boy was a dab hand with a spinner showing no mercy, he would bag 8 half pounders within an hour and sell them in town for fags. The river was plundered, as no one used to return adult fish in those days, yet somehow it sustained itself, I know S.T. helped by putting fingerlings in. Fly hatches were very good also with mayfly, olives and white moth working well in summer. Trout to 2.5 lbs. were present , and I heard a story of a trout over 6lbs caught many years earlier at the back of the town behind an abattoir.

In 1976 two things happened which constitutes my theory as to why it died as a fishery. In the first instance it dried up, and I watched it happen, fish floundering in mud as the water seeped into its bed. Remaining trout confined to septic pools and dying of oxygen depletion for over a month. The fish count at this time was easy as they were all at the surface gasping, I counted 13 adult trout in one pool above Bodfach. The aftermath was bad, survivors were starved fish riddled in gill fluke fighting floods. That autumn the grayling were still in good numbers down at Pentre, so I feel the river was recoverable given a year or two. However I never saw good fly hatches since then to the present day, the minnow population likewise almost non-existent. the river somehow almost became devoid of the living ecosystem we were used to!. One theory, Farmers were denied the land liming subsidy after 1976. I remember the lime spreading, like clouds of chalk dust scattered over the hills around the town. I feel the PH of the water was higher and perfect for the river back then. Maybe whatever farmers put on their land since then had the opposite effect!. Land drains came in, compounding the problem with too much run off.

I would love to see this river being given room to breathe again. It deserves TLC of any chalk stream. My vision? A view from the hills of Llanfyllin of a river meandering through a long grassed meadow with fresh alder and willow harbouring its banks, grazing fenced off well away. It could be the perfect catch and release fishery for beginners to start fly fishing.