Feedback & Reports

River extremely high and colour of heavily creamed coffee. Conditions made it impossible to wade. Accompanying map of beat and marked parking made it easy to navigate around. Tried nymph with indicator for a few hours then gave up. Stayed at The Bell in Skenfrith. What a great place! Give them your business.

2 caught on single upstream nymph, 1 on dry NDT. All returned. All approx 11 inches and looked healthy but a little lean. Lots of fly life, but only a few fish rising. River low but easily fishable. Enjoyable day!
Stayed at The Inn at Skenfrith, which was excellent!

3 Trout

Access was good in the mid section of the beat, few fish rising couple of takes on a dry but due to poor accuracy, missed!

Tough day and ham fisted attempts at striking to taking fish left us with a nil return. That said, beautiful beat that will reward the determined angler....we will be back.
On a positive note, some excellent white burgundy, parma ham and cheese, did not make for a wasted day!

Spent just a couple hours but no sign of anything moving. No fly life and no takes on nymph. Not easy to access water due to steep banks and vegetation. Water too deep to wade in many places.

6 x trout 6-14 inches, Hair Wing Sedge. The session started well enough. I arrived late morning on a cloudy day with some rain predicted, started at the bottom end having a cast at anything seen moving and had released half a dozen, including a nice one of 14 inches, by the time the rain started. This seemed like a good time to retreat to the car for lunch. After half an hour of what seemed no more than a moderate shower of rain, the sun came out again. Back to the river full of enthusiasm to start again where I had left off, and I was horrified to find it completely muddy - less than 6 inches of visibility. The fish had switched off completely. I was very surprised as there had not been that much rain, and wondered if there had been some more dramatic weather event further up the valley. But when I trudged all the way up to the top of the beat, I found the culprit was just one field drain - the one on the left bank which marks the top boundary - and which continued to spew out liquid red mud coloring everything downstream, while the river above was running clear. I have to say, I don't think much of some of the new field drainage arrangements made by farmers in this valley who have converted from stock rearing to arable. The water stayed muddy, so I eventually went home. I did find a shy roe deer drinking at the top end, though, which made a nice surprise.

6 Trout

Oh dear, what a disappointment after the last 3 days on Wye and Usk. Dirty brown water, overgrown banks; it felt more like a Louisiana bayou. I kept a good lookout for alligators in the swampy sections. There should be machete's supplied. The so called access points were hidden in the jungle and when I finally found one it was derelict. Not that it mattered because once in the water there was nothing to see. We left at lunchtime after a couple of small fish on the nymph.

2 Trout

A real pleasure to fish this very beautiful stretch of water in warm sunshine.. Caught a brace of trout each just under about 2lb plus a dace all on GRHE nymph. Plenty of mayflies hatching but very little evidence of feeding apart from the two trout that were caught. Yes it's overgrown and steep sided but well worth the effort.

2 Trout, 1 Other

6 x trout 10-15 inches, on a Dogsbody plus 1 x out of season chub. Not a bad result, but quite hard work on a hot bright afternoon, with very few fish rising and those always seemed to be oncers (except the chub). Still, if you managed to mark the spot, you usually got a take. We will pass over the ones I missed, pricked, and especially the big one which pounced like a tiger on a fly which I inadvertently allowed to drag on a tight line through a crease in the current. It broke the 4lb leader like rotten cotton – a shameful affair. By early evening, with the sun gone down, things began to liven up a bit. Some more mayfly were around and a few more fish began to rise. I would have liked to stay but I was already at risk of missing an important family occasion: to be precise, visiting hospital to meet a new grandchild. (Sorry I was late, Jasper, you will understand when you are older).
Incidentally, I note the access situation at Monnow Valley has been criticised lately in reports. This is an old chestnut. Of course the winter floods have rearranged the banks a bit at Monnow Valley, just like everywhere else, but it doesn’t seem to me to be any better or worse than before. Ladders and posts put in by the management a few years ago have survived. The broken stile hasn’t been mended so, sadly but inevitably, the farmer’s fence has been trampled down. The best way to describe Monnow Valley is the fishing equivalent of rough shooting and it may not be everybody’s cup of tea. It is a bit of a jungle and in fact it’s quite a bit rougher than many of the wild streams. There is a lot of tramping up and down on the edges of ploughed fields to be done. On the other hand it is a challenging and very interesting water to fish, superb with the dry fly and while it doesn’t seem to have a huge head of trout, there are some very fine specimens. It repays a bit of study. When fish are sulky it can be quite difficult but it can also provide a red-letter day. There are areas you can’t reach (which is no bad thing in a wild trout fishery) but a lot which can be covered. A winter grayling ticket is available and this is a good way to get to know the banks when the nettles and weeds have died back.

6 Trout, 1 Chub

It was a nice day, 5 trouts all of them catch and release.
The river was a little bit coloured.

5 Trout