Feedback & Reports

Nil return. One half-hearted offer in a short session. Third day in a row of gales and heavy rain. Banks very slippery with water running everywhere.

2nd day on the beat, the water had come up about 3 feet and racing through, also a lot of weed which has been a problem the last few days, rain and very windy made a difficult days fishing and we gave up early with 2 barbel and 3 chub.

Our visit coincided with the first major influx of water for a while which brought the level up my over 1.3m. This in itself was not a problem but the amount of weed and debris coming down was. It made fishing very difficult but we persevered and by fishing just of the rod tip managed a number of nice barbel from the obvious swims.

Blanked, but this beat has plenty of features and I am pretty sure it was mostly because of the appalling weather.
Will return soon.

3 x WBT to 10"

nil

River very low and clear, had a great day wandering fishing bread crust and flake for a total of 9 chub.

Again very low and suitable for trout only. High wind and lots of leaf drop made fishing impossible. No rises and no takes, so abandoned early evening.

Sunshine and storm on the upper Wye! A blustering wind, patches of sun between cumulous clouds, and a short, sharp, 5 minute shower coming regularly every half hour all through the day. More sustained and heavy rain set in before dusk. Almost no rises all day. Just one good grayling came up for a yellow may imitation at the beginning to get me encouraged (a oncer, let's say a twicer because he went for the artificial also), but then came off at the net. That was the only grayling I saw in the session. Otherwise, lots of mostly small trout and parr were in evidence, prepared to tweak away at spiders in the runs, but they wanted the flies either worked downstream and across or weighted down with a nymph on the point position. Not a very interesting way of fishing, but that was all the action I could get. (DC of W Herefordshire would be amused to know that I took no less than 3 rods down to the river, each made up for a different method, from dry fly to heavy bugs...but the grayling showed their contempt for all the money spent at Sportfish by staying well away). 13 x trout 6-12 inches.

Incidentally, referring to DC's report from Cefn Rhosan Fawr a few days ago about goosanders, the word in the pub at Sennybridge (for what it is worth) is that locals have been seeing very large numbers of these birds, particularly during recent winters. The theory is that these predators have pretty good hunting on the upper Usk and its tributaries in the upland area above Brecon, because so many of the pools have rocky bottoms without tree root cover for the fish to escape into.

Superb stretch of river, fished for 5hrs trotting sweetcorn over a large bed of hemp and caught 12 barbel to 8lb and 11 chub to 4lb along with a lone dace and lost many others.