Feedback & Reports

River looked perfect on arrived at 9am. By midday the river was starting to rise fast and colour up. Perservered for another hour but there was only going to be one outcome - pack up and go home. Presumably the mornings fishing doesn't qualify for a wash off?

Gorgeous morning - til the rain started falling! River started colouring up significantly during the morning, and by mid afternoon was a chocolate torrent. No salmon caught - a couple seen as the water started to rise.

I made a bit of a miscalculation here when I booked the previous evening, totally under-estimating the amount of rain due to fall on the Cambrian hills overnight. When I got to the beat, I was taken aback by the water height and rather wished I had taken a salmon rod instead of a trout ticket. Still, Abernant does fish reasonably well for trout and grayling in high water if it's not too mucky, so I had a quick whizz through with a team of spiders to establish that, no, they were not coming to the surface. What's more, the water was clearly still rising and colouring with more and more debris floating down as the morning went on. I think it rose 13 inches between 8 o'clock and midday. So, I switched to heavy nymphs and for about an hour found a few fish prepared to take on the bottom to the side of the main flow - first 3 nice grayling, then a smaller grayling, a single modest trout after a long gap ... and then nothing. I finally gave up at midday. 4 x grayling 10 - 14 inches, 1 x trout 10 inches, all on a Pink Shrimp.

Started the day with fishing down the main pool - and watching an otter fishing up the other bank. Only when we were directly opposite ( 25m) did he stop and we had a 30sec staring contest "excuse me I'm fishing here" after which he vanished into thin air. Water looked perfect but no sign of a fish at all throughout the day. Only at the end of the day 10 lb hen fish on T&L in Abernant stream - returned. Lovely day as ever.

Fancied fishing the big rod and hoped that the promised rain might liven things up in the evening. Thus enjoyed a couple of hours flailing away before switching to trout & Grayling. About 4 trout and 6 grayling including the smallest Grayling I have ever seen - about 3 inches!
Very little rain actually fell later on but a really enjoyable day where every rock could be seen and its position noted for the future.

8 x grayling 9-14 inches (mostly 13-14 inches), 5 x trout 6-10 inches, on various dry patterns. A slow day, a lot of which I spent snoozing on the bank. We have had some autumnal days lately, but this wasn't one of them, and it was a case of bright sun and very hot, low water etc. So the grayling, far from their usual happy-go-lucky relaxed rising right next to where you are standing sort of attitude, were actually quite spooky and it was necessary to rest the shoals regularly to get them rising again.

Otherwise, a whole group of canoes came through, school girls with a teacher, aparently unaware of the agreement. This is the third group I have seen come through this beat in the last month, all claiming to be most surprised when told that the whole river is not open to them at all times. From (polite) conversation, I'm pretty sure that in fact they all knew about the agreement, but simply chose to ignore it. I do hope we aren't going to end up with a situation on the upper river like that on the lower. Nobody would mind a few quiet canoers slipping past, but the problem is that while anglers usually pursue their pastime fairly quietly, canoers in numbers almost never seem to be able to. Is there any point in renewing agreements with people who seem to have no intention of keeping them?

8 x grayling, mostly around 14 inches, 5 x trout 6-10 inches. A mixture of dries and spider patterns. A beautiful place to spend time as always (you could almost believe yourself on the Spey here). Unfortunately the afternoon was extremely hot and bright (like the summer we never had) so that grayling, although present in the usual places, were a bit nervous and reluctant to rise at times. Necessary to rest the shoals or change patterns and on reflection I might have done better with nymphs. Potted salmon present in Stone Catch.

Sporadic rising fish rather than a rise. Water low and clear enough to occasionally see a grey shape materialise out of nothing, lift and clip the fly off the surface. Thus a mixture of tactics ( nymph, emerger,full dry) results in 2 brown and 6 grayling to 12". Pretty cool for August and a whiff of Autumn.

Lost one fish around 12lbs, it took two jumps to get off the hook. Other pools empty so kept myself busy with trout rod for rest of the day. 15 or so WBT up to 13", 6 grayling 9-13". Dry sedge #18 for grayling and klink #16 for trout. Finished at 7pm what was a very good day for fishing.

One small trout plus several salmon parr (all returned)
Grey Wulfe successful fly.

Excellent help and service at headquarters as we booked last minute being early to the area.