Feedback & Reports

Overcast mild day with light upstream wind. Heavy rain the night before. Started with dries at noon.
Conditions looked good but by 1pm only the odd fish had risen and very few olives coming off. I managed to take 1 trout on a dry.
Decided to try a nymph but had no interest after about an hour.
The temperature was rising and the odd fish rose so went back on a dry. Had a few refusals and after several fly changes got a hook up, sadly it came off. After a few more refusals and no more signs of fish I called it a day at about 3pm.
An interesting and somewhat frustrating day.

1 Trout

4 Trout

River very low. No sign of fish.

Very low water. No fish seen or caught

Fished a salmon fly in the few deeper pools with 8’’ on the gauge. Nothing seen.
There was a big shoal of lady spawners in the top of the beat today which constantly beat any trout to the fly. There were some good sized trout amongst them though. Very few rising fish seen all day despite a decent mixed olive hatch around 1.00 o’clock. Fish were taken on spiders and nymphs.
The “others” were from the sizeable population of tiny grayling and trout parr which made a bit of a nuisance of themselves in the low water. Hopefully, they won’t be cleaned out by predatory birds if this dry spell persists.
All fish in good condition and quickly returned.

6 Trout, 9 Grayling, 15 Other

Couldn’t resist a quick hour or so here, on the way home from the Wye. Very low water and I didn’t see one riser. Managed a few nice size fish nymphing the limited deeper pools above the bend though, in fading light.

3 Trout

1 brown trout. Returned to water

1 Trout

1 Trout

Lightish rain overnight and a damp start. We commenced our operations at about 10.30 and soon had a good fish on a size 12 nymph. There were no fly visible and just a few gentle, sipping rises in the pools so fished a red spinner pattern resulting in a cracking fish of about 2 pounds and full of fight! Quite the handsomest Usk fish I have ever had the pleasure to meet! Full of vigour too - a splendid scrap. She had already regained condition on the olives and March Browns - this has been an early season judging by the reports! (I am a great believer in the red spinner/red quill - 'the dry fly fisherman's sheet anchor on a strange river' - its amazing how often it saves me a lot of head scratching. There seem to almost always be a few red or reddish spinners on the water. Piscatorial peanuts... you see a bowl of peanuts and what do you do? When just the odd fish is rising lazily for no obvious reason it scores much more than it fails for me.) No fly to speak of until about 1.30 when a (very) few large olives put in an appearance. Tempted another fish but he let go. Some grannom were flying upstream during the afternoon. Saw plenty of kingfishers streaking around, electric blue, and had the pleasure of watching an otter fishing for a while - big chap too! I, for one, am happy to let this majestic creature share our fishing. I don't think all of my 'brothers of the angle' would necessarily share this sentiment, but his need is greater than ours! Apologies for a rather self-indulgent report.

2 Trout

Two fish on grey wolf dry flies, four on spiders. Three fish of 12 inches, others 8- 10 inches.

6 Trout