Feedback & Reports

Great day being tutored by the Welsh International Rivers lads - great info and great value - thanks to John & Alun for organising this. Very highly recommended for anyone who (like me) has struggled to read the river.
Took a lovely pound-ish brownie after the workshop in fast water - within a metre of where I was standing (hardish wading) and in water I'd already been covering for 10minutes+. Really hammered home the tips from the day!

1 Trout

A Curate's Egg of a day. The good? 4 of the Trout I caught were 1lb plus; with the best two going all of 3lbs a piece. So surprised was I to catch fish of this stature that I contacted Oliver Burch to check if anyone was stocking the river - and was gratified to be assured that they were almost certainly wild fish.
The bad? Having to turn two teenage girls, armed with spinning rods, off the water. The girls came down from the Caravan Park, within 30 minutes of my arrival, and proceeded to chuck spinners into the Lower Craig Lyn Pool. I must admit, I felt a bit like Scrooge telling them that they could not fish. However, having dragged myself out of a warm bed at 5:00am, and driven the best part of 100 miles to be there, I was not going to allow my day to be spoiled by anyone going down river in front of me with spinning rods. Their father (at least I assume it was their father) came down shortly afterwards. He opened with the standard "I did not know it was private" gambit and then said that he had been told that he could fish by "the bloke who is always fishing here". He then went on to tell me about the nice trout (plural) that he had caught from the Lower Craig Lyn the night before. Neither upstream nymphing nor catch and release featured in his repertoire (ditto, I suspect, reference "the bloke who is always here"). As if that was bad enough, there were two other fly fishermen on the beat. I did not get close enough to either of them to establish their bona fides (or otherwise).
Other than that, not a bad day. Unless you fish rivers like the Test (when you will almost certainly be catching stocked fish), it is not every day that you catch a brace of 3lb browns. That said, I cannot help thinking I would have caught more were it not for the antics of the worm/spinning brigade and the other two anglers on the beat.

5 Trout, 2 Grayling

Today no fish! I lost one and had a few very little attacks on the spiders but there was nothing rising.

Ben Woods (age 11 years) caught a 7lb salmon and a very small 3lb grilse!? On a rapala. Another very small grilse was lost on fly, all happened late afternoon yesterday.

2 Salmon

2 trout caught on silver fox spinner. Conditions really windy and choppy but still got 2.

2 Trout

1 Trout

2 anglers... 3 barbel an 1 chub from the boys rocks.

3 Barbel, 1 Chub

1 Trout

We were leaving today so fished from 12pm-3.30pm - not the most productive part of the day by any means.
Fished bomb and pellet again at the upper limit of the beat. Lots of tackle lost to snags which was frustrating at times.
Had to 'create' our own peg to get in where we needed to be but it was worth it in the end. I'm sure if we had been there for the evening we would have had more.
A long walk back to the car and a long drive home but 33 barbel over an evening, afternoon/evening and 3 hour session on the Sunday made for an unforgettable weekend!!!

6 Barbel

Didn't fish that long on this day as the wheel bearings on our vehicle had collapsed as we got to the farm, so spent most of our time trying to sort that out. Farmer dropped us off down at the swim for a fiver. I would recommend this as its quite a walk to the swims with your gear. You get plenty of canoeists on the Wye, some are respectful and understand the river to avoid you and your line, some are complete novices and are a nuisance. Biggest fish we had over the weekend was a 8lb 5oz barbel. Will be back again!

2 Barbel, 3 Chub