Feedback & Reports

Blustery day. Very sparoxic hatches. When hatch on a fish rose here and there. Water dead by 15.30.

9 Trout, 1 Grayling

River dropping after a wee bit of rain, didn't do the fishing any good, nothing caught or seen

Nice height of water and good colour, fished fly first and caught the first shad of the season, down to the rectory pool and nothing, back to spin the Mill pool and bang into a shad about 2lb , no salmon though

2 Other

First time on this lovely beat.
In it's short space (400 yds) it had every feature on which to show a 'newbie' how to river fish - long slow glide, fast riffle, deep pool, shallows etc.. and was therefore a perfect choice.Easy and safe wading too, though all of the water can be accessd without getting your feet wet!
Plenty of bird life to observe - Buzzards, Swans etc.. no Kingfisher today though ...and no insect activity or fish rising during our half day 10am - 2pm. Tried nymphing and wets to no avail. Back tomorrow , without the student, hopefully for some fish.

See today's other return.

Managed around 2/3rds of the beat today, starting from the bottom, where most of the decent pools seem to be located. Fished klink-n-dink as nothing rising despite decent hatches of olives and mayfly. Once above the footbridge, the middle section is quite hard work in stronger flow, and it wasn't until I reached the Rising Sun camping area that some more likely pools were evident. There are a couple of easy exit points about half way up the next field, and that was enough for me. Five fish around 10" and one at 14", all taking the nymph.

6 Trout

Some surface activity in the afternoon and one decent fish lost on a dry olive. A few other takes missed until hatch tailed off around 4:00pm.

The river was basically unfishable in its present state.
Water chocolate brown cascading through and dangerous for wading even with a wading stick. I didn’t feel comfortable in any of the swims at the top end. I started in swim second from top fast flowing with a ruffle using streamer an. Anything else pointless. Lasted an hour pushing up into deeper water which around 4ft was not comfortable to wade in so I moved. I almost took a dive in the one below with the gravel bank on the far side depth went from 2 to 5 ft very close in and current extremely strong. I lost my footing and only saved from going belly up in the string current by grabbing a branch at the bankside. Apart from one swim at the top of the beat There were no swims where entry was reasonably safe and this hard a steep bank to climb out. Lovely setting but no chance of catching fish so with river rising cut my losses and left early. Wash off?

2 Trout about 8". Blowing a gale again.

2 Trout

1 Trout