Feedback & Reports

Great day at the Creel, good weather and great fishing. All fish came to feeder tactics. Several swims tried throughout the day, however all fish came from two swims.

16 Barbel, 12 Chub

After fishing the top field the previous day I thought I'd actually walk the whole stretch before starting to fish on the final day. I hiked over the hill but I could only find one swim that looked like it had some depth and so I decided to fish the same swims as the day before. I had a small Barbel from the hole down from the dead tree followed by a decent trout. Moving up to the top swim I had three more Barbel in quick succession and then the Dace moved in, finally for the last couple of hours I moved back down to the previous swim and managed to net a decent Chub.
All in all I had a lovely couple of days on what was a new stretch of the Wye for me. As I mentioned it's always worth giving Woody a call for river info before coming up and if like me in London all your local tackle shops seem to be geared solely for carp anglers, his shop is a veritable Aladin's cave of river tackle.
Can't wait til my next trip up!

4 Barbel

Great day as per normal. Roger had the best barbel of 9lbs. All the others were slightly smaller. You need to hunt down these fish as they tend to move around with the low water conditions.

7 Barbel

On a low clear Wye after just a couple of fish on a day ticket water the day before, we were prepared for a hard day. This is a beautiful stretch and a nice drive to the river bank parking. We spread along the beat in the morning from the van stone pool to the Rope pool and mainly fished pellet and hemp through block end feeders and had nothing on pellet at all. One good chub to float fished maggot was all we had to show for our efforts up till about 1.30. Pete was fishing the downstream stretch and had persevered in the same swim all day when he eventually had a good barbel on blockend with maggot, after spending most of the morning on pellet. The rest of us followed suit in our own swims and what followed was truly great fishing. Before packing up at 5 pm we had 19 barbel to just under 8lb and another 3 good chub. The fish were in excellent condition and fought well , especially in the swims rife with streamer weed. Pete also had a 1lb trout in his bag of 9 barbel. Perhaps the fish just came on at that time and we would have caught on pellet but we were happy to catch on maggot.
An earlier entry stated that few swims were available. Apart from Luggsmouth where the whole bank is walkable I would say this stretch has got more than enough swims (with the added bonus of no far bank anglers)and we tried most of them

1 Trout, 19 Barbel, 4 Chub

River low and clear , R Thomas had 1 barbel 8lb 2 and a perch around a pound in the slow water third field down from bend, enjoyable day fantastic wildlife; pellet / sweet corn used, triple corn hookbait caught barbel, worm for perch as we left at 7 pm a few barbel started topping, and flashing opposite the building with scaffold on it would be worth staying a bit later and fishing there, unfortunately 7 pm was the latest Mr Richards would pick us up and didn't fancy the walk back to the car park area!

1 Barbel, 1 Other

River low and clear with floating weed and fallen leaves a bit of a nuisance. Started in Boys Rocks at 1.00 pm but had not a touch until 4.00 pm when I moved to a swim downstream until dusk. Same result! Neither barbel nor chub interested in pellet or meat. Some maggots might have been useful. Oh well, I guess we all have a bad day now and then!

A very enjoable day, clear river with some debris floating down. Fished the far bank, four chub to pellet no barbel.

4 Chub

Hard day with only 1 bite resulting in a hook pull. Conditions not great with water low and clear. My first blank on the Wye and a bit disappointing.

River was as low as I've seen it this season with very little flow. It was overcast and cool with a light north-easterly all day, and we struggled for fish - as did the five or six anglers on the opposite bank(!)
We ended up with just 3 barbel.
This is the fourth time we've fished this stretch this season, with diminishing results. We've not fished at week-ends but even so, each time we've been, there have been several anglers fishing the opposite bank. I believe the angling pressure from the far bank is beginning to tell on the fishing and I don't think we'll fish here again.

As always I phoned up Woody from Woody's Angling shop in Hereford before I came up just to check on river conditions and what methods he'd recommend (he runs the Hereford Angling Association which owns quite a bit of fishing on the Wye so he always knows what's working). He told me that the river was running clear and low and suggested maggot and block end feeder would be my best bet. Unfortunately I'd just been down to my local tackle shop in South London and bought a load of ground bait, pellet and a few more cage feeders - so this was filed for future use and I went back down and got several pints of maggots as I was planning to start fishing before Woody opened.
As it turned out I got a late start and went by the shop in Hereford anyway - I took my smartphone with me and got a close up image of this section of the river on Google Maps (satellite) then got him to show me the best swims to fish.
So I started in the top field above the rapids - just down from the first groyne of stones there's a big dead tree and about 40 yds down stream from this is a pool. I fished there for the morning and had a couple of Barbel, then in the afternoon I went up to the top and fished the furthermost swim with the steep bank. I had another Barbel here and luckily I'd also bought myself a decent landing net with a very long handle whilst getting fishing information that morning, otherwise I'm not quite sure if I'd have got it out. I had a few dace after this but that was the end of the Barbel for the day.

3 Barbel, 4 Other