Feedback & Reports

Water rose a little so chose to spin. Nothing caught but very impressed with pools and access. Will return in search of that large Wye springer.

Small but lively Salmon 4lbs on very small cascade. River very low & slow moving .
(WUF note: first Grilse and many congratulations in catching it)

1 Salmon

River 0.48m on the Bredwardine guage and dropping, and a nice tea colour after the rain earlier in the week. Great to be out again having not fished a river for the last week and so grabbed a few hours in the morning on the local beat before the wind really got up later in the afternoon. Fish rising on arrival at 9 a.m. and the odd one still doing so when I had to leave at 1 p.m. In spite of olives, YMs, the odd OU, sedges, midge, gnat and a few Danica providing a diverse potential bill of fare, fish appeared primarily to be taking the olives, as all fish were taken on a size 16 Universal Baetis Ducks Dun( see Gwent AS website if interested in tying details). OU, YM and mayfly patterns passed unmolested! Judging by WUF's catch returns, and reports from GAS on the Usk, the rivers at last seem to have woken up, now that the cold easterlies that plagued us for much of the last month seem to have gone. Fish ranged from 10, 12, 14 to 16" with two of the latter +/- 1.75lb.

14 Trout

Great day on the river, 38 inch long and slightly coloured fish. Estimated at 23+lb. It was taken on a gold hammered spoon single hook, and 9ft cane rod, it was fantastic scrap with lots of head shaking and jumping. Also 5 shad and a small brownie. Regards to DH for the usefull advice, who left 10 minutes before the show!

1 Salmon, 1 Trout, 5 Other

Fished the home waters on the middle Wye today (12 degrees air and water) from about 10-3 pm. Found fish midging in glides at arrival, seeming to be monopolised by 8” grayling, several of which took a small HE parachute emerger. Then there were some thin hatches of Grannom, LDOs and either MBs or LBDs (couldn’t get one close up enough to distinguish but they were one of the two) from about 11.30 until 12.45, which got a few fish active up top. I had five trout 10-14” and five ladies 8-12”, mainly on the HE parachute and a couple on a Universal Baetis Ducks Dun. I also saw some hawthorns for the first time this year (also reported from the Usk today).
I thought I heard a rise in the margins behind me at one point and turned around to locate the “rise” only to see an estimated 12lb hen pike with two men in tow coming up river to spawn . They were so preoccupied, they didn’t see me untiI I was almost on them trying to take some pix. Sex has a lot to answer for (as the growing shoals of resident chub and barbel also testify)!
Found a bonus, dead heron as well, so some feathers have gone into a bag in the freezer - more Kites Imperials!
A fun few hours but still very hard fishing. The prevailing cold winds just seem to be killing it. Hopefully the rivers will soon really wake up, though Monday and Tuesday’s forecast cold weather seems unlikely to help?

Cracking Spring day on the Wye, water nice colour perhaps a little high. No fish seen or caught thanks to Mike and Phil for their advice, lovely water and lots of it.

1 Chub

Nil. Thanks to Mike and Phil for their advice.