Feedback & Reports

Bright sun shine & a low river meant it was going to be a hard day. Morning - 2 rods fishing top meadow on the island, one on the feeder one on the float. The feeder rod had a nil catch, with plenty of dace and chub on the float. Third rod went roving middle meadow.
1pm - 5pm, 3 rods in middle meadow, one small barbel and 3 chub on pellet for one rod. Lots of small dace, chublets and roach on maggots for the other two rods.
5pm walk back to top meadow, 3 rods in one swim for a chat and coffee thinking of going due to no sign of fish and poor river condisions. 6pm and at last some cloud cover - what a difference. Finished fishing at 8pm with 3 rods casting all over the river taking a total of 20 barbel and 4 chub.

What an end to the day. My best fishing experience ever. Sugwas is a lovely beat - we didnt see a soul all day. Can't wait until How Caple Court next weekend.

1st time on this beat and have to say we were dissapointed with the limited number of swims on the middle/top of this beat especially the top where fighing our way through the woods trying to find pegs wasted a lot of fishing time. It wouldn't take a lot of work to improve this area, also, re a previous comment that there are a couple of cracking pegs screaming to be opened up in the orchard.
The lower end of this beat presents much more fishable river with some really nice swims and once we located the fish we managed to catch 35 Barbel and 10 Chub with the biggest Barbel going to around 8lb.
We would definatley fish this beat again, we just hope the WUF listen to ours and previous comments about limited swims and carry out some work on the top end of this beat as it would change it from a good beat to an excellent beat.
Directions and access to the beat spot on and no problems encountered with the local livestock !
Thanks.
WUF Note: Clearance work is due on this fishery in October under our HARP project.

Stunning location, stunning fishing. 15 barbel and 7 chub, including 3 x 8lbers to the birthday boy! Being able to have the beat all to yourself is perfect. Thanks to the riparian owner and WUF.

Enjoyed a better day today, and the beat has so much to offer that we were spoilt for choice. Spotted dozens of Barbel in a shallow part but they all spooked when some pellets were fed via a catapult, so moved and caught 18 from another swim further up the beat, the other lads with me managed to catch 10 between them as the afternoon wore on. Lots of little Barbel jumping on the lower part of the beat, thinking they were Salmon it seemed?????

23 barbel to 8lb 8oz, plus a few chub to over 4lb.

Very low and clear. Lovely stretch with lots of potential but only had 3 barbel - loads of chub caught though.

As I am the world's biggest sissy when it comes to being in the same field as anything bigger than a sheep, it was with some trepidation that I booked a day on Sugwas. Naturally, the first animal I saw on arrival at the orchard was the bull, who lived up to all previous reports. A chat with John, the keeper, "assured" me that the cattle would be no problem, so I spent the first few hours trying the obvious bankside swim and the gravel island in front of the cattle drink. Caught 2 chub and hooked 2 barbel, only to have the line cut on a rock or some other snag.
Other anglers fishing below me from the opposite bank were catching regularly - so there's a damn good swim begging to be opened up under the bank in the orchard woods.
Moved down to investigate the lower section. More cows, but no bull this time. (John told me he [the bull, not John], had made it across the river, broken down a fence, and was currently engaged in pestering the neighbouring farmer's milking herd - so I'm glad I didn't meet him!) Some lovely looking water here. Spotted a number of barbel holding in the current and occasionally flashing, so tried a swim upstream from them. 4 barbel came to the net in the next 50 minutes until they had enough and the swim died. Biggest perhaps 7lb and smallest a little gem of perhaps 1lb!
Had a few casts in a couple more swims with a decent chub as result. As the evening wore on I had a couple more supercharged chub which convinced me they were barbel, and lost what would have been the biggest barbel of the day when it pretended to be a chub and snagged me in sunken branches.
This stretch has some very nice looking swims, all of which I expect will fish well on their day.
And of course, the cattle just ignored me.

Having fished Holme Lacy the day before we know that finding the fish in the very low clear river would be the key to catching, and so it proved as in the first 4 hours we fished most of the pegs on the top half of the beat for 1 chub each, but in the afternoon my ( Ghille )
Neil found the fish in the bottom meadow and caught 10 barbel ,all 6-8lb fish while I caught 3 barbel and 5 chub.
All the fish again caught on Halibut pellet.
Once again a great days fishing but I feel that with a small amount of work more pegs could be made available in the wooded areas, which would make the beat even better. Many thanks W.U.F

River was low and clear as expected. Fished upstream of the orchard and remained biteless until 3.00pm when we had seven barbel between us in the next two hours. All on pellet. Then it died again. Best barbel was an estimated near double. All the others were beteen 5 - 8 lbs.
Must echo the previous comments regarding the difficult access to the limited number of swims available in this top stretch. We weren't able to explore the whole length but from what we could see there were only three accessible swims. Two of those had to be waded to and would be difficult to access when the river was carrying extra water. The area next to the parking area seemed better suited to mountain goats rather than anglers!
WUF directions etc were spot on. Thank you.

Fished 2.00pm - 9.00pm, I had a terrible experience, my complaints are as follows:

Barbel: As a Great Ouse regular, I'm not used to starting at 2.00pm in clear water and catching a Barbel within 30 seconds of casting out. I was pouring a cup of tea when an 8-pounder tried to take my rod to Hereford. Fortunately I was only disturbed by four Barbel throughout the course of the evening.

Chub: They fight too hard. Twice I hooked large Barbel and emitted yelps of joy, only for the fish to miraculously turn into a three-pound Chub.

Salmon: I was just nodding off when a large Salmon crashed out of the river and woke me up. Please remove them from the river.

Canoes: I was lead to believe that I would be entertained by parties of canoeists capsizing, having water fights etc. Only four or five passed and all were disappointingly courteous.

Despite the above, and because I am a selfless individual, for the appropriate remuneration I would be happy to fish this beat on my own every day until the end of my life, just to ensure that no other angler is forced to suffer in the way that I was.