Feedback & Reports

First time out this season and thought Chanstone would be a good bet early season. Fished Tenkara with a single Tungsten bead nymph. 3 Grayling caught in the lower half before lunch and 2 Trout caught upstream of the bridge in the afternoon. Saw a couple of Olives in the air around midday but no fish rising.

2 Trout, 3 Grayling

My first time on this beat and considering how bad the weather has been recently I was lucky to get a chance to fish. The river was at about 0.5m on the gauge and unfortunately the water was still coloured. For this reason I only fished a small portion of the upper part of the beat as I was reluctant to wade upstream in coloured water I wasn't familiar with, especially knowing there are deep holes dotted along the beat.
Despite this I managed to find two nice fish of 12-14 inches using a heavy green czech nymph on the point and a red tag nymph on the dropper and lost several more.
All in all a great afternoon on a new beat.

2 Grayling

Tough going. Still the Dore is very low even after the amount of rain over the past week. All the trout took size 20 midge and the grayling heavily weighted nymphs from only the deepest of pools. Two were at 15 inches the other three 6-9 inches. Several herons spotted and two of the grayling had been slashed by them. The grayling never really switched on today.

8 Trout, 5 Grayling

Dore was low and gin clear. With the horrendous overgrowth around the river, the clarity made getting near fish with no cast available difficult. That's why they are called wild streams I guess. Access also tricky - basically waded up from the bottom end of the beat, and there are very few access points on the river before the car parking spot. With an extra 18 inches to two feet of water, it would be unfishable.
That said, for those pools where short casts were available, fish came. Biggest out of season brown was just over a pound, with three smaller fish, but no grayling. Didn't see many fish, and no grayling spotted. All fish came to a small goldhead under an indicator.
Only fished the bottom half of the beat, and walked the top half afterwards. The top half is more open, but fewer pools and generally much shallower. Saw very few fish in the top half.
Overall, a nice stream, but I wouldn't fish outside winter, as Summer vegetation would make it really difficult.

4 Trout

4 x grayling 10-14 inches, 6 x out of season trout 7-11 inches, Gold Bead Hare's Ear nymph. Another challenging day on the Dore, water still very low and clear, carpeted with leaves - weather still warm and windy. Out of season trout rather prominent again, but a remarkable number of grayling, some of them of fair size, were spotted in the pools. As far as I know, the weir at Vowchurch (top of the beat) is as far as the grayling go up the Dore, but there seem to be plenty here. All we want is a few more inches of water and a little colour and this should fish very well.

4 Grayling

No fish today river still very low I only fished for about 2 hours in the afternoon.

2 x grayling 10 and 11 inches, 5 x out of season trout 6-10 inches, Gold Bead Hare's Ear. The first time I have managed to get to Chanstone this year. A warm, dull, rainy day. I found the little Dore very, very low, 0.21 on the Peterchurch gauge and, unusually, extremely clear. The bottom part of the beat was full of very visible, easily spooked, small grayling. Nothing was rising however. I experimented with different nymphing methods, but it was not till near the top that I worked out that, on this day and in these conditions at least, a single size 16 nymph cast upstream on a tapered leader seemed to work better than anything else. So a couple of fish to record.

5 Trout, 2 Grayling

Very tricky the few hours I was on this beat. Water low, clear with very bright conditions with the bigger fish laying idle in very shallow water. I dropped down to 1lb tippet on a ten foot leader and still managed to spook 90% of fish targeted. On the plus side saw a fair few grayling in the 10-14 size so with a good downpour and some pace to the water could have a good day for winter grayling.

9 Trout, 1 Grayling

Nice four hours on the Dore. All but two trout and grayling fell to size 18 beadhead nymph. The two to dry fell for size 18 f-fly in dark natural cdc. As with all wild streams this beat also is carrying little water. The only ace card being it has many long deep glides and all takes came deep from these areas. This beat also seems not to be as overgrown as many others.
WUF Note: The Wild Streams Volunteers put in quite a few hours to clear Chanstone Court last winter. From this season's reports, it looks like their efforts have paid dividends!

15 Trout, 2 Grayling

No fish today. The conditions are very tough with a lot of vegetation and low flows.