Feedback & Reports

10 trout, best just under a pound. The stiff easterly breeze made conditions quite awkward at times, but it was still a lovely day's fishing on this beautiful beat. The river was very low and clear, and most of the fish came from the deeper pools, taken on small weighted nymphs.

Hard days fishing. Not much happening plenty of black gnat, and the odd olive. A dozen trout to half a pound on a mixture of dries and nymphs. One tiny grayling.

One canoeist even on 'drought flows'! Heard my first Cookoo of the year.

2 brown trout, 1 grayling, all returned, on a GRHE nypmh. Very warm and sunny afternoon, river very low and clear.

Several small grayling (up to half a pound) in various pools upstream of the bridge; all taken on size 16 goldhead PTN fished above a heavy nymph. Great beat. Peaceful and very picturesque.

The weather was good, fished the whole of the beat with no grayling caught.

After another enjoyable visit to the Bateman Arms in Shobdon, we arrived at Lyepole about 9.30. The rain overnight had increased the speed of the river somewhat and made life very difficult for our inexperience. No bites but a glorious beat with pairs of dippers a and a mother otter and 2 cubs spotted on the island at the upstream limit. Will try again next autumn.

Lyepole has always been a favourite venue of mine for a good days winter fishing. However on this day it was not to be, I caught just three fish, two tiddlers and one good grayling of around 2lb. This fish had half of its tail bitten off and scars caused by a beak on its back. Hard to believe the fishing was this bad on a perfect river, with mild sunny conditions. It has been a poor winter for grayling fishing, roll on the trout season and some warm weather.

Only one small out-of-season wild trout caught (on a Czech nymph). I covered most of the beat, fishing with a variety of nymps at different depths, but couldn't locate any shoals of grayling. A few large dark olives started to come off around mid-day but it didn't spark any fish interest. On the plus side, there was plenty of wildlife and the snowdrops in front of the holiday cottage were looking impressive (they will be even better by this coming weekend).

Double blank, I'm afraid - no contact with grayling. The water, although clearing, was still very high, or at least too high for a couple of senior citizens like us. Still, it was good to be out and about on the bank again after all these weeks. First snowdrops just starting to show.

7 x grayling 12 - 17 inches. Beautiful as the valley at Lyepole is, it's a bit of a frost trap and doesn't see the sun for long at this time of the year. Thus everything remained frozen and rather dour until late afternoon. And as I happened to know that two very good competition anglers had fished the beat thoroughly the day before, I expected to have to work hard for shy fish. In the event I was lucky enough to locate grayling in just a couple of spots after lunch and picked up a few good ones, including a fish of 17 inches.

In response to a question asked in an earlier feedback from a grayling angler who has been scratching in difficult winter conditions, I could suggest the following ideas:
Even on the coldest winter day, grayling usually feed for a short period at least (the afternoon is generally better than the morning; the last hour before dark often best of all.) However, they are likely to be fixed on the bottom and won't move far out of line, so that the nymph has to be presented almost literally in front of their nose to be taken at all. This implies searching the bottom of all known and likely hotspots very slowly and carefully indeed, almost inch by inch. It will be slow progress and on a short winter day you won't get through anything like a mile of the Lugg or Arrow. Don't worry too much about patterns but concentrate on presentation and getting the weight correct so that the nymphs just trip along over the bottom (if you are doing it right, expect to lose a lot of flies on snags). Strike downstream at any stop or hesitation of the leader. Look out for an afternoon Large Dark Olive hatch which might liven the fish up a bit.