Feedback & Reports

A very foggy day in the Wye Valley. A few salmon crashing and abundant bird life. Only half a dozen canoes all day. Fish came to ledgered boilies.

3 Barbel, 3 Chub, 1 Other

Brelston Court : Nothing seems to have improved since the last visitor to this beat. Access is extremely difficult with most of the water inaccessible and those few areas that are have no room at all for casting a fly. Trotting is pointless as at least some flow is required to achieve this and then the bottom is full of snags. The one riffle that is visible, just, was totally overgrown with briars….
My advice to fellow anglers would be to fish the lower Garran Beat or the Abbey Dore which is a sheer delight by comparison.

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

Great day, quite a bit of floating weed.most fish coming at dusk on pellets.in up steam area. Lovely beat.

3 Barbel, 4 Chub

11 x grayling 6-18 inches, 1 x out of season trout 14 inches, Tungsten Hare's Ear and Pink Shrimp. The Lugg has picked up an inch or two since recent rain, but still unusually clear. A mixed bag of grayling, from small shots to several nice ones including a large cock fish in excellent condition. The out of season trout looked like a wild fish. One hen brownie on a gravel flat showing distinct redd cutting behaviour, despite the warm weather. In fact it was a very warm day, absolutely still, with slanting sunlight. A memorable day in every way. The mating instincts of wildlife caused some hazards during travel however; my way home lies through Hereford and then across the Forest of Dean. After a near miss with a rutting fallow stag in front of the car on the outward journey, there was another in darkness on the way home followed a mile later by two suicidal wild boar in quick succession. Drove the final part of the journey in third gear, all ready to brake.

11 Grayling

Good water, level rises after rain. No surface activity, sunny, windless. Hard to find a fish all day long, one hour before dusk fish were more active, saw a few salmon jumping.
Regards

2 Trout, 1 Grayling

Spinning and worm with float. 1 crayfish but 0 fish.

Did not fish due to leaves on water

River was ideal, had good flow and some colour. Started with Elips pellets with feeder in the morning but no success. At about midday, switched to 1" meat cubes using inline ledger and fished further out in main flow, bites started immediately. Lost a couple of Barbel in weed and landed two fish 7.8lb & 5.5lb. After lunch there was a lot of freshly cut branches and debris coming down river, I presume from bank maintenance work further upstream, it became difficult to fish so I went to watch the rugby final. Spoke to the other ticket holder further downstream who had at least a dozen barbel on pellets & feeder - so don't rule out pellets based on my report.

2 Barbel

Lovely bit of river, with good access, we used groundbait feeders with pellet/maggot with groundbait pluged ends, we caught 5 barbel & 2 chub during the main part of the day, using pellet on the hook, 5 more barbel caught early evening as it started to get dark, testing conditions due to weed drifting downstream causing frequent recasting.
All fish were mint condition and went back well/strongly.
We look forward to revisiting the venue.

10 Barbel, 2 Chub