Feedback & Reports

Beautiful hot last day of the season. Very windy. 19 dark coloured trout c&r. Plenty of takes on dry black coloured flies, but fish were too fast for us so small nymphs on the drop/slowly retrieved proved more effective.
ACCESS: Track as far as ruins before lake much improved since beginning of year, but from here down to lake not ok for cars.

10 barbel to 9.5lbs, 2 x chub.

River low but not as clear as our last visit in August therefore hopes were reasonably high. Misplaced optimism I'm afraid as the day proved to be very tough indeed. We fished the top & bottom of the beat extensively with a range of baits (including maggot) but could only tempt 2 barbel & 3 chub between us.

Despite hoards of canoeists and some of the hottest days of the year the barbel fed well and over a day and a half we banked around 28 barbel, most in the 2 - 5lb range but a handful were in the 8lb bracket. Several chub up to around 4lb were also caught. Big feeders filled with scalded pellet doing the job, with bites sometimes coming 'on the drop'.

This is our 3rd visit to Caradoc with only 4 rods fishing as per the local rules, again the river proved rock hard on what has to be one of our favourite beats available, extremely peaceful and quite, especially after Wyastone Leys the previous day, all set in stunning surroundings.
Like may other previous reports the weed was a problem throughout and despite searching most of the beat, starting on the shallows and working our way back upriver past the hut, only 3 Barbel around the 7lb were landed by the pellet anglers.
One of the rods did put together a reasonable catch of silver fish trotting sweetcorn from one of the croyes, dace and chublets etc, with none of the bigger Chub or Barbel being tempted by the method.
Again many Salmon were heard and spotted crashing around, especially around the hut leaping well clear above the water on several occasions, this must me some ritual the fish perform to entertain the anglers.
All in all a fitting end to a wonderful 3 day beak, made even more enjoyable by record braking weather, “we will be back”.

8-9 18cm to 25cm. 1 x 25cm fish killed. A dozen or so under 18cm.

19 x grayling 12-17 inches, 1 trout 12 inches. This was dry fly heaven; they were rising when I got there and it went on all day, so no need to try any other method. I started with a small Klinkhammer and went back over the same pools a second time with a Grayling Steel Blue when the first fly had lost its charm. Very nice fish with an excellent average size - a lot of 15 inch fish in the Irfon at the moment. The temperature had reached 24 degrees C when I finished mid-afternoon.

Not a bite didn't see any fish either, but it was very hot and sunny, there was so much weed coming down it was very hard to keep the rod in the water (huge clumps). Apart from that, lovely place, nice swims, easy parking.

Caught around 30 fiesty young barbel in the 1.5 to 3lb range. This is very encouraging to find two to three year old fish in what appeared to be large shoals. Rarely catch barbel under 5lbs usually. We also caught a few chub to 4lbs and half a dozen barbel in the usual 5-8lb range. All taken on halibut pellet.

Bring on the Indian Summer if this is what is going to happen - sunny and hot all day but pretty breezy too from mid-morning until late afternoon. Early stonefly, a few PWs but none of yesterday's olives seen further up the river at Abernant. Very few rises; mainly oncers. However, we managed to catch 42 grayling between us (but very few trout). Most grayling taken on emerger patterns irrespective of whether they were rising or non-rising fish. Flies included HE, olive and PW emergers and Grayling Steel Blue (about 1/3 of all emerger-caught fish taken on this pattern). L's catch, whilst fishing duo, also included eight grayling taken on a tiny, gold tung-headed pink nymph whilst D, less productively at this time, slavishly persevered with emergers (the benefit of ringing the changes)! Fish from 8-12 inches, and a significant number in the 13-15 inch class. A good day to reward L's journey from the Dee.