Feedback & Reports

4 Barbel to 6lb 15oz and 2 Chub to 4lb 13oz. Three fish taken early on with a chub early afternoon, then a long wait until 4pm when I had the final two barbel which were both over 6lb. All fish accepted ledgered Halibut Pellets.

2 x grayling 7 and 15 inches, 2 x out of season trout 10 and 11 inches, bugging with braid. I lost a good grayling at the top end at dusk. Very hard work to get those, although the Monnow looked in just about perfect condition, which is rather surprising with the high water elsewhere.

Second day on this lovely stretch. I cut down on the gear and walked down to Quarry pool I think. Rather expensive on the gear, 6 casts resulted in 4 complete sets of end gear lost, 3 with fish on! I cast shorter each time but still it all went solid. The last fish was 100 yds upriver because I moved away from the area. Snaggy area was in the middle of the river just upriver of the green shed thats on the other side, beware. Today I moved around more as the weather was very pleasant. 4 barbel and 3 chub plus the lost fish means that today was far more productive. Same tactics as yesterday.

The details state that the steps are slippery, they are ok until you get down near the bottom then the tree roots have moved several steps. The second of the steps that have moved has tipped forward and was rather slippery as I found out to my cost, slipped off it and landed with a crash, was wary of it thereafter! What a lovely stretch of river. Conditions looked really good. The weather was a bit rubbish so I fished the 3 swims for longer than I would normally have done, still I had the day after there as well. I caught a couple of barbel 4lb to 5lb fairly early in the day and then struggled until gone 5pm before I had another bite which was a small chub. As I was playing it in I think I saw an otter opposite me, light was starting to fade so a bit difficult to be sure. All fish came to legered pellet.

Nice day out on this beat. Air temp 8 degrees water temp 7 degrees, water quite clear and low for winter. Managed to wade in most places where it was required to try and get best out of fishing. Struggled to find grayling with only a couple of pulls early on in the day. Only one female grayling to TH of about 1/2 lb late in the day to save us from a blank.

Surprisingly the water level was quite low with just a tinge of colour. Started off wet and windy but gradually improved as the day progressed. Hard fishing but had a short successfull spell (approx midday) when landed 3 decent grayling between 1 and 1.75lb. All cheque nymphing just downstream from the brick barbecue.

1 Trout approx 8oz. 1 x Grayling approx 1½lbs.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the secret behind catching Grayling in the winter is to find where they are. That is exactly what I failed to do today so the scorers were not to be troubled. Not sure why; the river looked just about spot on and, in spite of the nasty, strong wind, the air temperature - if not the water temperature - was around 10 degrees higher that it had been last week. Cormorants - which I suspect had been rather more successful that I - at both ends of the beat.

Only one small out-of-season wild trout caught (on a Czech nymph). I covered most of the beat, fishing with a variety of nymps at different depths, but couldn't locate any shoals of grayling. A few large dark olives started to come off around mid-day but it didn't spark any fish interest. On the plus side, there was plenty of wildlife and the snowdrops in front of the holiday cottage were looking impressive (they will be even better by this coming weekend).

We arrived at 8.30am to find the river high enough to cover a lot of the concrete path by the parking area. We went up river some 500 yds and set up and stayed in one place as the weather was very windy and not the sort of day to be moving swims. One rod had a barbel of about 4lb within half an hour of starting which was very pleasing, shortly after the other rod had a chub of about the same weight. By the end of the day the other rod had caught just the one barbel and I managed a barbel and 3 chub. Barbel came out on pellet and the chub came to sweetcorn. Nice and mild but less wind would have been so much nicer.