Feedback & Reports

Skinny water today with very bright skys made for a tough few hours. 8 to hand taken on size 18 CDC emerger, lost a few also. Rain needed to fill the streams up again. Largest 13 inches, the rest between 7-10 inches.

8 Trout

River level low but still coloured from the rain early in the week. Very few fish rising and almost no hatch to speak of. Took one brown trout (7/8 in) on a black 14 klinkhammer and a lovely grayling (again in the 7 to 8 inch range taken on GHHE).
Vegetation getting slightly out of hand but river is fishable in waders. One kingfisher and 4 dippers helped the day pass by.

1 Trout, 1 Grayling

Poor and difficult evenings fishing. Only managed to rise a single fish.

Set alarm for 4.30am, overslept due to a cracking movie on film 4 and arrived at 9am instead of 6am. Fish rising on arrival and took a few to cdc shuttlecock size 20. Then the sun rose and the rises stopped, in fact everything stopped. I have fished this beat a few times and never really struggled, well today I did. Switched to size 18 bead-head and only managed a few more. Lost a few also. Water levels were low and moving at a snails pace which does not really get me excited. Fly life minimal during the midday period. Hoping for some rain to put some pace back into the water.

7 Trout

8 x trout 6-10 inches, Rusty Klinkhammer. A strangely tropical sort of morning, beginning with a torrential downpour, carrying on hot and sticky with the Skirrid and Black Mountains hidden by low hanging clouds, followed by yet another torrential downpour late morning. This finally turned the stream muddy and brought sport to an end. Fishing during the interval between the rains, trout were found hanging in the deep slack water of the pools - rather unusually nothing much was to be found in the runs or on the pool tails. In deep pools with almost no flow at all, the best technique was to cast the fly out and then give it a twitch to draw attention to it. Wham! A few mayfly were still around, even so late as this, but fish were not much interested, preferring a small (size 16) artificial. Good to have this beat back on the list, especially after a team of volunteers worked to prune it on behalf of the owners during the 2012/13 winter. I can see we shall have to do it again soon.

8 Trout

Very little fly activity and very few fish rising. Water coloured and still quite high after the rains. There are a number of trees that have fallen across the stream making progress difficult in places.

Bright and very warm made conditions difficult. Dreaming of babbling pools popping with wbt but found a sleepy, slow, meandering stream.
Persevered with dries and managed 6 wbt, one clonker of around 14". All returned in good condition, thanks partly to barbless hooks.
Despite tough conditions I liked this beat. Takes about 4 hours to fish, easier to navigate than the Escley beats and looks really fishy.
Will definitely return, maybe May next time.

6 Trout

More like a July or August day - lovely weather but no fly life and nothing rising. This isn't an easy beat. Good to see kingfishers for the first time this year.

Beautiful weather on a beautiful stretch of river. Unfortunately the rain that should have finished the day before had stayed until that morning and the river was a brown soup. Waited a few hours and fished as the water was just starting to clear. A few mayfly about but no fish rising. 4 trout caught on spiders. I'm sure this would have been much better had the river been clear.

4 Trout

3 trout up to 12 inches, a few mayfly about but not many fish rising. Caught 2 on a nymph and 1 on a dry mayfly and also missed a few takes to the mayfly.

3 Trout