Source to City Hardcover – February 12, 2026

The Taff was once a zombie river, still flowing but completely dead. Pollution from the ironworks and coal mines of the Industrial Revolution killed it. Now the industries have gone and it has recovered to be one of the best mixed fishing rivers in the UK. In late 2024, two hundred and twenty years after the first steam train in the world hauled iron bars alongside the Taff, I set out to spend a year exploring, photographing, and fishing all the rivers and valleys of the Taff catchment. After more than fifty years of fishing with rings and a reel on my fly rods, I decided to spend this year using only tenkara rods to fish the Taff in winter and autumn and its tributaries in spring and summer.Source to City is the story of that year fishing these varied rivers. Long walks with a tenkara rod and a minimal amount of gear took me to places I’d never been or considered fishing before, often with surprising discoveries. Along the way I learned much more than I previously knew about the geology, wildlife, and the industrial history of the place I have lived for over forty years.Source to City provides detailed background information on each of the rivers alongside twelve stories of fishing the Taff system, from the small rivers of the upland valleys to the main river as it flows through urban areas down to the sea. The book also includes details of over fifty flies of the author’s design developed for fishing these varied waters for trout and grayling.From the foreword to Source to City by Theo Pike, author of Trout in Dirty Places:To know at least one river in detail, pool by pool, from source to sea, should perhaps be the lifetime ambition of every angler. That’s what Nick Thomas has achieved on the River Taff in Wales. Supremely democratic and egalitarian, yet still too often overlooked, waters like these are precious. I hope Nick’s wonderful book will motivate many other people, wherever they live, to pick up an old-school map, go exploring, and share and care for such rivers in common with everyone else who wanders their banks. The results of Nick’s efforts – in beautiful fish, photos, and quiet satisfaction – show us how post-industrial waterways can provide unique opportunities for public access that rural rivers sometimes lack.Nick Thomas lives in Cardiff a mile away from the river Taff. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs and rivers over fifty years ago and continues to design, tie and fish flies for trout, grayling, and anything else that will take a fly. He has been a regular contributor to Fly Fishing & Fly tying and Fly Culture magazines and to Global Flyfisher online. He has also written for Trout and Salmon, Fallon’s Angler and Grayling as well as contributing to a number of fly tying and fly fishing books. He is the author of three previous books on fly tying, fly photography and fly fishing: Fly Couture, Imaging Imitations, and Mending Lines. Read more