Feedback & Reports

Bright sunshine. Very clear water. Stiff breeze in my face. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking with them.

Quite a bit of fly life about but very few rises seen. Very calm and warm for the time of year. I plodded upstream for a few hours with an elk hair caddis but had no takers.

A lesson today in reading the insect life. Fished 6 hours on Lower Crai and although I rose a couple it was hard going and I was zero fish after 4.5 hours. I thought it was the weather, pressure, temperature, clumsiness, etc. I had tried variants of Para Adams in size and colour but without success. There were fish rising but I couldn't tempt them. There was a steady hatch and in what I can only claim was in desperation, I decided to try something different and switched to a Blue Dun. Instant success with two fish caught in quick succession and a further 7 to follow (all returned). I don't normally pay attention to what is on the end. I have a favourite and usually very successful Parachute Adams "habit". I particularly like them because I can see them! Perhaps todays lesson was one of breaking habits.
PS: A word about my ninth fish. Coming off the top of the beat I had caught 8, but 6 hours previous, a large fish at the beat start had frustrated me. One final cast with the Blue Dun on the tail of the pool and I had my fish of the day in a plump 12" Crai trout which bent my rod double. Fantastic!

9 Trout

See report for Upper Crai. Same result.

Cold and very clear, no fly on the water and no fish showing. Was not expecting it to be at all productive but a pleasant couple of hours.

4 trout. Fished from 8.00 pm to 9.30pm. A quick move here from the Senni paid off. Flow very low, plenty of refusals and boils under dry adams in still pools. Best fish 14 inch rest 7 - 9 inch. Lots of tiny salmon parr about trying to drown the fly!

4 Trout

Most fish between 8" and 10" although a couple smaller and a couple larger at around 12", all to Adams. The river was very low and very clear so the going was quite tough in the morning. The fishing definitely improved in the second half of the beat where there were deeper pools with faster flows. It also wamed up in the afternoon and the wind dropped, so the weather helped.

14 Trout

Beautiful day - sunny and 14C with (unusually) no wind.
The bottom of the beat is mostly shallow water and I've never seen much moving there. Further up, there are deeper pools and these are well worth the effort. Easy wading.
Three pretty brown trout (2 x 7" and 1 x 5") brought to hand and released and three times as many takes missed. Hooked what felt like a substantially bigger fish but it broke my 6X tippet on its first run. All fish came to a Para Adams.

3 Trout

Water extremely low. Caught 3 nice trout and lost a leviathan for a stream like this (c. 2lb). Attractive stream.

3 Trout

No catches to report. Very tough fishing. A nice day nonetheless.