Feedback & Reports

A pretty quiet day all in all, a couple of trout landed and some parr and small fish lost. One or two sightings of salmon but nothing hooked.

2 Trout

1ft 1 inch on the gauge, running clear, but no catch. Before the sun got on the water, a fish hooked in the Rectory Neck on a size 10 Bann Shrimp. It backed steadily down into Rectory shaking its head until eventually the hook pulled. Another test of character.

Water dropping off now had a 29" hen fish from the mill stream in the morning and a 37" cock fish from the rock pool that went absolutely crazy when it realised it was hooked !?

2 Salmon

Small flies used did not get a pull . i would like to say a big thank you to Tim Hughes for giving me lots of information and i have gained some more knowledge on where to fish.

8lb hen from Mill stream, size 8 Bann Shrimp, one heck of a scrap.
Water more coloured than I would have expected.

1 Salmon

River at 1ft 8" and 30" visibility. Started well with a 10-11lb coloured hen fish from the Island stream at 6.30am. Only fshed Island, Rock and Bridge and then it was 8.30am and time to go to work. River coming in nicely but not much showing; only saw 2, both between the stones and the wires in Bridge.

1 Salmon

1ft 11ins and still very coloured this morning. NTR

River level meant no fishing for me today !

Spinning high and coloured water (2 ft 9ins slowly falling to 2ft 6 inches). NTR

An excellent finale today after an infuriating start. The height at around 1ft 9ins was perfect but the water peaty and coloured though the clarity was an improvement on last Friday.

Fished down Bridge Pool at 11am with 3/4ins Willie Gunn tube. Nothing showing until a large fish jettisoned itself at the fly between the visible mid-stream rock and the submerged one closer to the bank. I felt the pull, the rod bent and line was taken followed quickly by nil contact. On pulling the line in I discovered that my leader had developed an unhelpful liaison with a wind knot which provided the unhappy explanation. Good to have James K following me down the pool to witness this ineptitude.

Fished Gravel and Rock pools with no takes or fish seen and then gave it a rest until 5.45pm when I fished the Bridge once again with a #8 Usk Grub. I had expected the water clarity to have improved but there was little change before the rain fell heavily once again. A very gentle take in almost slack water above and slightly on the inside of the submerged boulder turned out to be a massively strong 28lb (42ins head mid-tail) cock salmon eventually brought to the bank and returned very positively having never left the water. My largest salmon to date.

I fished down again to see if I could tempt a second fish that had shown whilst playing the first but nothing doing.

1 Salmon