Feedback & Reports

Caught five barbel and one chub, all on halibut pellets. Found it tough going during the day when it was hot, bright and sunny. Clouded over in afternoon when the barbel showed up, all in very good condition!

Excellent directions, a nice beat with easy access to the water. Very quiet during the day with a few small chub. Things improved towards the evening with four barbel and a small trout all to pellets and feeder. Very nice day - thank you very much.

Since Sugwas has become available to the W&U, the reports lead you to believe that this beat has exceptional potential for the coarse angler, I can now advise that to be true!
The four members of the WBCaAC (Wye Barbel Catchers and Aspirers Club) set off even earlier than normal this time around as we were itching to spend as much time as possible by the waters side. This meant alarms at 02:00 hrs in order to arrive in time for first light. Arriving in the ‘Orchard’ car parking area on first viewing it was apparent that it may be difficult to fish this top end due to the lack of water. After much discussion amongst the four after perusal of the swims available, we opted to drive to the other two areas of parking further down stream. ‘Two Ton Trev’ and ‘Ton Up Tony’ surveyed the lowest section whilst ‘Bailiff Russ’ and ‘Jilted John’ (John the only ‘aspirer’ left in the party) cast their eyes over the middle section. It was the middle section that took the fancy of all and as Russ and John were in position first so had the first dibs on swims. John was placed in the swim most suited to his comfort and set about organising his ‘Tackle Shop’ of equipment (shame he forgot the milk!) and Russ settled into the swim below between a pair of trees. Trev and Tony arrived on the scene soon after and promptly settled on two swims below that of Russ. We broke at lunchtime, for a civilised glass of cabernet sauvignon and celebrated the loss of John’s Wye barbus barbus virginity!
We fished until approx 20:30 hrs with a return for the 4 rods of 47 chub to 5lb, 9 Barbel to 8lb and probably the catch of the day falling to Tony of a 2.8 lb Perch! The majority of the barbel were taken on pellet fished over hemp although the four did catch fish on 8 different baits.
It was a long journey home, especially for Trev and Tony in their BMW (Barbelless Men’s Wheels).
On a serious note: We would like to take this opportunity to thank the W&U for their normal professionalism with special thanks to Adam for his patience in talking to Trevor! We will be back later in the year albeit under our new guise of WBCC (since we no longer have any aspirers).

Thank you!

Started off in the orchard area, river very low and weather unhelpfully sunny to begin with. We waded out to the small gravel island and cast to the run across to the far bank. The spot produced 8 barbel of a surprising high average size, with 6 fish between 7lb and 8lb plus. In addition to the barbel, we had about 15 chub to 4lb plus, and again the average size of these was much higher than we've encountered on other stretches.
We moved downstream mid afternoon but this turned out to be a mistake as we only caught a further 2 small barbel and 3 smaller chub.
Nice to get a bend in the rod again on a very pleasnt stretch.

Arrived early full of anticipation for our first trip to the Wye this year ,only to find the river up by about 3 foot and pushing through. So the next stage was to find 4 fishable swims, so having walked the beat we all settled into the middle section. So out with the bait dropper and in with the hemp followed by the pellets. The fishing was very slow to start, but as ever with barbel fishing when you are not paying attention to your rod you are at risk of losing it (pouring a cup of tea), the rod was hooping over and I was quickly greeted by my first wye barbel for the year in pristine condition and weighing between 6-7lbs. By the end of the day I managed 11 barbel and numerous chub, best fish went 8-14 with 3 others over 8 as well. I do believe the volume of hemp put in helped keep the fish in the swim and the hook bait was nothing larger than 8mm .

12 barbel to 7lbs and 7 chub to 3lbs between the three of us. Rising river after overnight rain.

20 barbel biggest 9lbs 1 0z. 7 chub average 3-4 lbs. All caught on pellet. Excellent fishery a little concerned about a bull in every meadow!! however this did not prevent us from fishing.Access was excellent but orchard stretch of river was more or less inaccessible for fishing. Thank you Wye and Usk Foundation for an excllent days sport in very difficult river conditions- low and clear.

4 barbel and 6/7 chub. Largest barbel 7.5lbs, largest chub 3lbs. First time on this beat and I suspect we didn't quite get our location right. All in all a good days fishing in great surroundings.

Changes of plan meant that we could only put 1 rod on for 2 hours or so but still time for 4 barbel & 1 chub from the open water higher up the beat.

We were initially perplexed as to where to fish but thanks to WUF for advice. 3 of us finished with 26 barbel and some chub on what is a lovely piece of water.