Feedback & Reports

Having had a trip in June to the lower Wyes which was defeated by floods, this trip to the Upper Wye was defeated by quite low water (8" at Llanstephan gauge), blazing sun and heat (25 degrees), and probably my ineptitude. The river seemed very quiet. I saw no fish move and despite a trickle of sedges and other hatches, no rising trout or grayling. I covered all the "low water" beats listed in the excellent notes. I also met a couple of kayakers peering over the fence at the Heirag falls. I told them I didn't think their double kayak would really be suited to shooting the rapids. Eventually, they came to the same conclusion and spent the next 30 minutes, dragging and scraping it across the rocks and then shot straight through as I fished the bridge gutter. Oh well. They were nice enough.

WUF note there is an arrangement whereby canoes keep off until the end of the season of when there is a spate which rises over the red line on the Llanstephan gauge

Nice grayling of about 2lbs. I haven’t fly fished a river this wide before so it was a bit daunting at first.

2 Trout, 1 Grayling

5 Trout, 5 Grayling

Salmon were quiet, tenkara rod came out for 1 Grayling and a trout.

1 Trout, 1 Grayling

Many thanks, unfortunately no fish seen.

No fish taken

2 Trout

Beautiful beat, no fish unfortunately.

2 Trout

Once again the weather forecast was wrong, saying it would rain on and off all day today. In fact it rained during Wednesday night and the river rose do a decent height during the night and fell during the day.
I'm reminded what a lovely beat this, particularly the stretch in front of the hut down to the rapids. There was no sign of life at all until lunchtime when some flies started coming off and there was an occasional rise. All the fish I caught were in faster water.
There was, again, no sign of salmon. I have seen one Wye salmon only this year, when I hooked one and it got off. I can only imagine that numbers are low.

10 Trout