Feedback & Reports

3 Trout

No lucky for fishing ???? but weather was lovely over

Outing ruined by intimidating thugs that turned up in two trade vans and started sharing a motorbike that they rode illegally off piste around the area, danger close to walkers, cyclists , my wife, parked car, dog. Over revving engine, spinning wheels to throw gravel and make dust clouds where I was fishing. These guys are regular visitors to that spot on weekends , I've seen them before there with that bike, making big pallet fires and using a kayak on the lake. The police should hand out some Section 59 Notices and get that bike crushed.
Barely any fishing time, waste of trip.

Lots of fishing on this beat, access not always straightforward on either bank, due to steep sides and trees. However, still plenty of places to access but the easier parts are also busy with walkers and dogs - the big island was worth getting across, to fish the variety of pools and runs.
Mainly overcast and a light breeze made it cooler than last couple of days. River lovely and clear. Hatch started around lunchtime and lots of surface feeding, tended to be in short spurts, so you needed to be ready!
Helen found a great spot and caught two nice trout, on dry flies. Both released.

2 Trout

A nice March brown hatch at 11.30am had the fish rising eagerly for about 45 minutes, during which time 4 good fish were brought to hand ranging from 1 3/4lb to an ounce under 3lb.
Once the hatch had finished I gave my wife some casting lessons, with her fishing a nymph down and across through the riffles. She landed her first Usk brown trout, a 1 1/2 pounder before hooking a huge fish that thrashed around on the surface for a few seconds before coming off. It looked to me like a fish well over 5lbs and one that would have absolutely demolished my PB wild brown trout over a 45 year fishing career, about an hour into hers!

5 Trout

Nothing. Don’t waste your money they don’t put any fish in just taking money I scanned the whole reservoir with Sonar not a single fish in there.

Nice day no fish

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

Nothing caught