Feedback & Reports

The River had coloured up and risen over the previous afternoon and night. The usual productive swims on this beat failed to produce to any great extent, I do not know why?? 1 barbel to 4lb and 2 large chub all to pettel & corn.

Got to river about 2ish. Sat out a wicked thunder storm in the car, got on the bank about 2.30pm, set up and fished the feeder with hair rigged corn and corn and chilli hemp in the feeder. A shoal of dace destroyed the 3 grains every time!! Set up the float and rod fished a single grain on a size 16 for a good hour taking 20 nice dace and 4 chub to 2lbs. From 4pm to 7pm switched to 2 10mm elipse pellet and ground halibut in the feeder and took 9 very fit Barbel to 6lbs. Bank holiday weekend saw constant canoe traffic until 5.30pm which was when the barbel came on. did notice 2 Cormorants arrive as I left and land in the big ash tree on the RH bank !

One brow trout caught on N Country spider pattern. Water slightly coloured after the recent rain but river level acceptable for wading. Some rain during the day but did not spoil my time there. No luck with the Salmon.

The fishery was easy to find and access from the car park was good. However, despite the fishery being over a mile long there were only a handful of swims with adequate access to the water to be able to fish. Some of the first swims had very high banks and it was not possible, even with a long, fully extended landing net handle, to reach the water to be able to safely land a fish. This could have been a consequence of rain in the week raising the water level to cover areas people could normally step down onto to fish. Nevertheless the three of us found swims to fish and had good sport, for the most part anyway! I caught 2 barbel of 4lb 13oz and 5lb 15oz on fishmeal boilies fished in conjunction with a groundbait feeder filled with halibut pellets. My father, MB, caught 5 chub to over 3lb, an eel of around a pound and two barbel, one around 6lb and the other 6lb 4oz. All his fish came to feeder fished halibut pellets. The third member of our group, fishing from the 2nd swim of the fishery (MB fished the 3rd swim and I fished about 300m downstream of that) sadly blanked, despite using similar tactics. All in all a good day was enjoyed by all of us, even MC who blanked! But it is worth noting that the 2nd field (I didn't walk any further than the 2nd field) is lined by a fence and only allows access to the river to make one fishable swim. Given this field is probably one third of the length of the fishery we were a little disappointed as this, coupled with the high banks and over grown banks of the first area, meant there was a vast expanse of fishy looking water we couldn't access. I am 30 but my fishing partners for the day are both over 60. I was able to explore the overgrown, slippery and steep areas (to some extent) but sadly they weren't so their fishing was very limited. Personally I love river fishing as it's natural and I don't like fishing commercial pools with man made swims right on top of one another. So I don't raise the point about a lack of access for any other reason than to inform people, especially those of an older generation that our experience told us that although there is over one mile of bank available in this fishery, the vast majority of it is completely unfishable. However, it's still the Wye, it's still a beautiful wild river and there are some stunning fish to be caught!!

Water very coloured from storm evening before, fishing hard going, few strikes but none landed.

Bright day, sunny with showers and occasional down pour. 4 fish hooked/landed, x2 grayling 8", x1 5" WBT and x1 14" WBT. x1 Grayling hooked but not landed estimated 15" from Lower Weir pool. WBT taken on Grey Klinkhammer with white post, grayling on black nymph with green flash.

Nil return river still too high.

High and very colored water. I wasn't sure if I'd be lucky that day but perseverance paid as I had 2 lovely trout of 12" each on beaded Pheasant nymphs.

This was our first visit to Chainbridge. We arrived after a night long fall of rain to find the river rising and coloured. Barry, the owner of the beat, was river side casting a spinner as we arrived. He offered to show us the beat and that was very helpful. We could see it had the potential to be an excellent water and the catch returns filled us with hope. Alas the water continued to colour up, a flotilla of jetsam arrived early afternoon and we threw in the towel around 3pm. I had a couple of sizeable trout below the bridge which was too overgrown to fish with a fly. It was an enjoyable day but, with the absence of any showing fish, fell short of sublime!

Love this beat, fast water, glides, pools, and good stamp of trouties. Managed several fish, 3 of which were pushing twelve inches and fought very well. Nothing rising so decided to fish the fast water and heads of pools with beadhead and payed off very well. About 2pm one pool was boiling with fish hitting emergers, switched and bingo bongo few to dry.