Feedback & Reports

9 x grayling 6 - 18 inches; 3 x out of season trout 6 - 10 inches. A mild dry fly day with plenty of fly life and virtually no colour or height on the river despite recent rain. Several really nice grayling. Most on an Olive Klinkhammer and a couple with spiders.

22nd 2 brown trout caught and released on the Channel beat both about 8 inches. Some larger fish seen including 1 possible salmon in excess of 8lb estimated.

23rd river levels up and heavily coloured no fish seen.

Signposting for Ystrad beat is all over the place and appears to route alongside the farm house. Unable to find any other route to river. Asked permission from house owner before crossing.

4 grayling up to 14.5 inches and a trout.

After a lot of rain overnight, the river had a good flow and was slightly coloured. I fished throughout most of the day in torrential rain, but stuck with it and was rewarded with a great day of fishing. Using tungsten beaded PTN and GRHE (size 16's & 14's), I caught 18 grayling (size range 27-46 cms, with 5 fish over 44 cms)and numerous sprats. I found fish in all parts of the river, but they seemed to prefer runs that were 2 - 3 feet deep with a moderate flow. It is worth staying until dusk, as the larger fish were caught in the last two hours, whereas the morning and early afternoon seemed only to produce sprats. All fish were returned.

River had a good colour and some additional water - tricky to be sure as I hadn't seen it before the rain. Temperature of the river also unknown as my thermometer was broken. Over the two days there was plenty of rain but this didn't seem to significantly add to the river level. There was a lot of debris coming down (leaves, weed, branches, small trees, the Marie Celeste etc) making the river tricky to fish. A good swim choice was one that had a combination of flat gravel (no rocks) on a crease, this meant that the fishing was bearable - avoiding most of the debris in the main flow and preventing constant snagging of hook points on the rocks - leading to regular hook replacement. On both days I spent a good hour or more searching for right areas to fish. I caught barbel on both days from completely different areas - in total 9 barbel to 8lbs 10z (3 over 8 lbs).

The middle part of the day was slow, but it proved well worth returning to swims that have been previously baited in the late afternoon, as they produced fish first cast.
This also seems to hold true for other stetches at the moment; on the 24th Oct I moved upstream of Ross (much less colour in the river upstream of
Monmouth) and caught another 9 barbel to 8lbs 12oz, but action was slow until 4pm - then it was totally manic for about two and half hours.

A day of mixed fortunes. 3 Grayling, 2 of them very small but the other was an absolute whopper of two and a half pounds and a personal best for me.

The river Lugg was carrying a fair bit of colour and was up after overnight rain this looks like it affected the fishing if recent reports on the W&U site just prior to my going be are to be believed, or perhaps my fishing skills leave a bit to be desired. All grayling caught on czech nymph in the pools. The big fish gave me quite a time and I had to land it downstream.

Just a thank you note for this trip. It was fantastic and I am definitely a convert.

The barbel weren't too keen at Whitney Court but I had some stunning chub up to 5lb.

Backney was a different story. Three barbel to 9.5lb, chub to 3lb and a 16lb pike that has a penchant for halibut pellets (fantastic fish but I was disappointed when I thought I'd hooked the biggest barbel in the world).

You see some wonderful things when you are sat on the riverbank but if I hadn't seen the following, I would not have believed it.

Kingfishers Have A Sense of Humour

The kingfishers had been buzzing up and down the river all day but it doesn't matter how often you see them, your attention is always drawn to the blue bum skitting across the surface and amazing speed. Well, one of them at Backney was rehearsing for the Red Bull air races.

I was sitting on a cob and about 80 yds or so downstream from me were three swans, probably 10ft from the bank and just holding position with their wings curled like they do in the best photographs.

Out of the corner of my eye a flash of blue on the far bank turned out to be a kingfisher hurtling downstream, 18 inches off the surface and hugging the tree line. For no obvious reason he suddenly swerved and shot diagonally across the river, between the chests of a pair of swans who could not have been more than 2ft apart and then back across the river to continue his journey down the far bank.

Why would that little bird fly at least 50 yds out of his way to buzz the swans unless it was just for a laugh. I could imagine him sniggering to himself as he flew away.

Arrived on a beautiful autumn day, but first view of the river confirmed my worst fears - a very low and benign looking river Monnow.

With such an absence of flow and nothing rising, there were precious few pockets of water to fish. Did manage to winkle out 3 small grayling (6"-8"), all returned safely. They fell to small spider patterns - Snipe & Purple, Partridge & Orange.

Make no mistake, this is a super beat: easy to find, safe parking opposite the pub, simple access and easy wading. It has a good reputation for winter grayling so I will wait for the Welsh heavens to open and try again!

3 small grayling of approximatively 4 ounces each caught on small nymphs (pheasant tails). 5 good sized grayling ranging between 12 and 15 onces caught on Czech Nymph and Shrimps. Very nice beat but I found some of the parts towards the end of the upstream limit impossible to access.

3 x grayling all 14 inch; 1 x out of season trout 8 inches. Warm earlier with some (autumn-sized) large dark olives creating a little top of the water activity in order to take a few on spiders. Then cold wind after lunch and fish seemed to switch off. Lost a couple on nymphs.