Feedback & Reports

Lovely day fly fishing, plenty rising but none took the hook! Will definitely be back! Without waders the water was rather cold!

Perfect start to the day with a chunky trout at the top of the beat on nymph. With a hatch of grannom and enough rising fish, interest was quickly switched to dry fly selection. Tried everything in my toolbox; size, colour, presentation, stealth, outrageous, conservative. All wrong! Went back to nymphing but with not a single bump or nibble for two hours decided to head home. Good pint of Butty Bach in the pub. Will be back in May for another attempt.

1 Trout

4 Trout

Weather dry but very windy which made it feel 5 deg colder than 13. Very difficult casting as wind directly upstream and fishing wet fly. No luck with wet march brown so changed to goldhead haresear nymph size 12 and landed a nice trout of 14 " in woodstream.at about 14.30. No other takes and wind picked up further so left at 16.15.
John fished a series of nymph patterns but had no takes at all. Difficult day overall and worse than forecast

1 Trout

1 Trout

Fractionally over 1ft on the Trostrey gauge, 9c at 10am rising to 15C in the early afternoon, crystal clear water.

I've never fished this far downstream on the Usk but I'm glad I gave it a go. I ran into the owner who was out doing some maintenance and he was generous with his time talking about the beat and how it fishes. The beat itself is long and straight-ish but has decent variety. The bottom end is, as the description says, very deep. I tried wading it as the water level was quite low and there are a couple of places you can get in on little spits of gravel, but it gets deep quickly so I was right up to near the top of my chest waders. Still, it's worth a try and covering what you can - the water flows well and there were occasional rising fish at 10am.

Further up, there are some steps down to the better fishing (for trout, at least) just below the bridge. The wading is easy (but still chest-deep at first) and I was able to move upstream all the way through the Wood stream, which is a couple of hundred yards of streamy water, only having to get out once to bypass one deeper hole immediately after the bridge. This is the best part of the beat and runs from chest to knee-deep with plenty of hollows and varying currents. Because the river is so wide, I spent a long time zig-zagging back and forth to cover it all. By the time I got to the flats above it was 3pm and I pushed through about a third of it until it got too deep. The water is still relatively quick moving here and would provide excellent surface action on the right day. I ran out of time after than and only had 15mins on the top pool , which has a nice deep channel for nymphing. Above that it gets deeper but I think you can probably get up on the right bank all the way.

There were olives coming off throughout the day and sporadic rises to them. A hatch of March Browns and something else much paler came on around 1.45 which induced a wonderful, splashy 30mins with trout all over the place. I got far too excited, tangled myself up horribly changing flies and then took a few attempts to find the right pattern so only fished the end of the hatch, but had two great trout (14" and 12") and lost another.

All in all, a lovely day and I'd definitely fish again at this water level.

2 Trout

Great to be out on such a nice day 16deg and .82m.
I fished both wet and dry march brown for trout and hooked the same fish at exactly the same spot an hour either side of midday. frustrating not to land a fish of around pound and a half but happy I selected the right fly.
John fished the double hander on intermediate and Usk Grub from Upper Rock through Rockpool to the Chine with no takes.

In contrast I fished today 29th in dull and wet conditions for hour and a half at 10deg and .67m to no effect.
Gave up at 14.30 when temp dropped sharply in N/NW strong breeze with no fly life to be seen. Disappointing.

March browns came on for an hour but didn’t see a fish move all day. As mentioned in other reports, access is quite difficult but it’s beautiful water.

Brown Trout on Flying C from Wood Stream.

2 Trout

2 Brown Trout on Flying C from Wood Stream.

2 Trout