We were due to meet a couple of friends in a Herefordshire rented cottage in mid May to catch-up, chat, eat and drink wine. Also, Chrissie and the other two are keen gardeners and wanted to go to the Malvern Spring Show and look at/buy flowers and other horticultural produce.

Now I'm not actually very interested in growing stuff so managed to wangle a day-pass to go fishing. A quick search and I came up with the Wye and Usk Fishing Passport scheme. Similar to the Ribble River Trust, it aims to make a number of rivers and streams in the Usk/Wye/Severn catchment areas available for trout (and some grayling, salmon and sea trout) fishing. Unlike the Ribble scheme, you book a day on a specific beat via an Internet page - and mostly get the beat to yourself. Cost is around £10 or £12.50 - which, considering the locations is, in my opinion, pretty good value.

Initially I wanted to fish the Arrow in Herefordshire but due to the Ghost in the Machine (commonly known as a cockup) I ended up with 2 beats on a River Monnow tributary (or Afon Mynwg as it's know locally in Welsh) near Longtown in Herefordshire just on the England/Wales border. So, on a greyish morning I said good-bye to Chrissie and the friends, shooing them off to Malvern, made some cheese sandwiches and coffee and eagerly set the Sat Nav for an unknown road somewhere in the Welsh Marches! I guess I should have noted the 'unknown road' part really - and taken my banjo. Forty minutes into what was ostensibly a 30 minute drive I noticed that I'd passed the same turnoff twice and with lightening intelligence realised something was not quite right in the world of the GPS. Now I quite like the lady on my unit but being instructed to 'turn left' repeatedly soon gets a bit old. Never mind, cunningly I ignored the next 'left' instruction and struck out into the unknown confident in the knowledge that the modern technology would re-calculate, untwist it's knickers and plot a fresh path to my destination. Well it sort of worked out like that but not before I was scrapping the wing mirrors on vegetation on both sides of the jalopy at the same time as scrubbing it's underside with the triffid like growth in the middle of the track - and that's making the trail out to be way grander than it was. It's funny how the mind plays tricks on you but I really was sure I could hear the strains of a plucked stringed instrument floating through the matted hedges. Anyway, to cut a long story (and journey) short I got there in the end.

Tackle today was a 7' Fladen Vantage 3 weight rod with a dinky 2/3# Wychwood 'River and Stream' reel, a Wychwood Connect Light Presentation WF-3-F floating line, a 5' Loopy Leaders furled leader (these are really good value and certainly do the trick) with a tippet of about 3' of 6lb and 2' of 3lb fluorocarbon. Wipe on some Mucilin and I was all set!

So, down to the river, set against the backdrop of Welsh hills and sheathed in freshly greened British broad-leafed tress. Clean air, no sound of traffic and a sight-line uninterrupted by any man-made structure - what a jewelled treasure. To cap it all the sun was just beginning to peep out between the clouds. There were insects everywhere, floating in pale swarms over the river surface but being a bit ignorant I couldn't really identify them all - I did spot a sedge of some sort and the occasional giant which must surely be the fabled Mayfly. But what were the fish feeding on? Considering the clouds of flies hovering over and bumping into the water there didn't seem to be much fishy activity - maybe, like me, they were on holiday with their fish friends elsewhere.

Anyway, what to do? I tied on a Griffiths Gnat - mainly because I'd tied it and had been told it was a good catch-all (ho-ho, I really crack myself up sometimes). Into the water, cast .. promptly hook a fine birch, or it may have been beech - but whatever it was it's way to big to land. Unhook, wade on cast and cast again. It's no good the buggers just don't like my tempting offering. Lets try a Klink and Dink combo. Some kind of high-viz parachute and a Pheasant tailed Nymph - must work surely. By now I'm getting really good at catching trees. This is excellent fun and involves loads of wading around, stumbling and dropping the rod into the water as I try to snag that just-too-far-away branch to get my flies back. But it is wasting time so I develop a sort of whipping sideways, lowdown cast which actually seems to cut down on leaf shredding - am I actually learning?

The fish are beginning to play with me now, sploshing to the surface adjacent to where I've just cast or precisely where I'm not looking and I'm sure I can hear them sniggering as they do so. Clearly, my casting is by now quite masterful so it must be the fly (or the rod … or the line … or the reel…). Let's try a buzzy black thing - more sniggering. OK, how about a beautifully tied sedge complete with closed wings and two elegant antennae. Ok, Ok, Ok, I'm glad I'm amusing you. Lets have a bit of a rest and a think - perhaps something I should have done earlier. There are a few big Mayfly on the water but I can see them floating by and the fish don't seem to be taking them. Most of the clouds of flies that are about are quite small and very pale in colour. I'm not able to catch any to be more specific - bit like the fish really. So, I ditch the fancy stuff and pick a fly called a 'Universal Dry' which I'd purchased on a whim from 'Peaks Fly Fishing' tied on a 16 hook, all pale, petite and interesting.

Now let's think about where I've seen fish rising. Mostly it's been in some fastish runs sweeping below a bank and often below trees or vegetation. There's something like that just up stream from here so off we go - quietly like a fishing panther! (probably more like a day-glow hippo to the fish no doubt). Tricky, the riverbed is a bit rocky, uneven and slippery here. Still I can cast sideways now so let's just see what we can do. Drop the fly there - yep that looks OK. Wait…, the fly drifts down the stream - not dragging in the current - good. The surface bulges and pops. Good grief, I can't believe it, a foolish young thing glops the surface and my fly disappears! Lift the rod, feel the vibration and I can see the flash. Something is on! Hold the rod up, pull in the line, step back. Ooops, I told you the bed was slippery, my feet go forward and the rest of me goes the other way and I'm now lying flat on my back in the shallows. God the waters cold as it flows down into my waterproof waders - did I bring a spare pair of knicks with me in the car?. Like diving in a wet suit - don't, whatever you do, move much because the sluice of ice down your back is neither refreshing nor comfortable.

Anyway, incredibly the trout - for such it is - is still on the hook (probably too weak from laughing to do much else) and I've netted my first brown trout. What a lovely creature, golden fins with weathered oak and scarlet spots flicked across it's body. But I don't want to harm it so with a quick 'phone-camera snap to prove it wasn't all a dream, I hold him gently in the stream and flicking his tail disdainfully he's off with a tale (ho-ho again) to tell.

And so it went on. The perfect day really - even with wet shreddies. In all I caught 7 wonderfully coloured wild brown trout from about 6inches to around 12 inches, all plump, arrogant and feisty. And of course the biggest one, that I didn't quite bring to the net, must have been all of a pound if he was an ounce, taken from a deep dark pool just below the bridge in a thickly shaded cathedral of a glade.

I finished the day wading back through green hooded shallows, glittering with dappled yellow jewels of sunlight. If anyone's god exists anywhere in this universe of ours, then she lives on an English trout stream in May.