WHEN the sun sets on the north shore of Llyn Brenig, lighting it up like burnished gold after a glorious day of blue skies and gentle warm breezes, then you realise that you are only a step away from paradise, writes seasonal ranger JIM JENKINS.

We have indeed enjoyed a lovely week here at Llyn Brenig bringing with it warm temperatures and almost perfect fishing conditions.

Sometimes in life, events and situations align themselves in such a way that make for the perfect day.

Well, during the week the planets all collided together to create that perfect fishing day.

There was warm water (12C) with fish rising all over the lake, plus "great fighting fish" in the words of Sean Gardner.

With the fishing gods behind you, then what could possibly go wrong?

For Mr Burrows, from Eglwysbach, it appears that he had such a great day that "nothing could go wrong" and he caught his full quota of fish.

In fact, the lake fished so well that the rod average was a fantastic 5.1 fish per angler.

With the warmer water and the fish moving to the surface, it was a fly fisherman’s paradise, with the chance to practice the art of using natural flies on a floating line.

The fish tended to be lying in small shoals and if you find one fish, you will find a number of others.

The biggest fish of the week was a lovely 6lbs rainbow that was caught by Phil Carrington, from Holyhead.

The biggest bag went to John Davies, from Montgomery, who recorded an impressive weight of 18lbs for six fish caught.

He not only caught some cracking fish, but all the fish he caught were on dry flies.

There was a very heart-warming story when four-year-old Gruffydd Glyn went fishing with our very own fish farmer Jack Finney and managed to catch not one but two fish.

He will now be hooked for life and can look forward to many happy days ahead fishing with Jack.

The top flies over the course of the week were cat’s whiskers, dabbler, cormorant, buzzers, green fritz, pheasant’s tail, diawl bach, black pennel, tadpole, black hopper, hawthorn and orange nymph, along with various blobs and boobies.

The lake fished really well on the east side, from the Nant Glyn shore down to tower bay.

Hafod Lom was particularly productive for boat fishermen, while the ring of stones down to the coves fished well from the bank.

In front of the visitors' centre also fished well for both bank and boat fishermen.

We have a number of introduction to fly fishing sessions coming up, which include fly tying and casting lessons.

Details of times and dates can be obtained from the visitors' centre.

The lovely weather certainly brought out the fishermen in their numbers over the course of the week and with the forecast set fair for the coming few weeks, I should imagine we will see these figures increase even further.

So, you had better get to the Brenig early to secure your spot on the bank or make that phone call to book your boat as before long, things might get back to the old days when fishermen were queuing around the block like the first day of a new Harry Potter book.

We can but dream.

Tight lines.