Feedback & Reports

Warm and breezy. Challenging fishing with endless fly changes. The majority or rises were to tiny spent flies drifting past, like a endless conveyor. Almost impossible to imitate. The only deviation to a natural fly, fluttering on the surface. 3 fish to 1lb for 2 rods.

3 Trout

Thought there would be more of an evening rise but no. Still managed to persuade a couple of 8" trout to a Kite's.

2 Trout

8 Trout, 6 Grayling

Warm sunny day with no breeze to speak of. Fly fished for two hours and spinning for another hour but no luck.

Fished 11am to 4pm, with traditional wets and dries, really hard going with the weather so hot and bright, and not quite enough wind. The odd fish showing, but no significant hatch to talk of. Still, a lovely place to blank and get sunburnt, will give it another shot sometime, hoping for more cloud and a bit of a chop.

A few Yellow May Duns coming off right from the outset, these were soon joined by Olives of all sizes, the fly life seemed to build to a crescendo at around 3:30pm by this this time there were Mayflies, and even a hatch of March Browns, lovely to see so many types of fly in one day. By 4pm all had gone a little quiet except for the Yellow May Duns which continued to trickle off all afternoon. The fishing was difficult despite the fly life, rising fish would generally disappear as soon as you got near, I noticed in the Catch Returns there have been a lot of fish caught in the past few weeks so perhaps they’re getting a bit weary...or maybe it was the bright sunshine, either way I managed 4 to 12 inches today but enjoyed the challenge and missed way too many, lost a few too including one really big fish right at the end.

4 Trout

Fished all day no joy but a lovely beat.

While nothing much was jumping of its own volition there was no shortage of rises to a Parachute Adams - almost a fish in every glide and head of every pool. The challenge was finding the bigger fish with more than fifteen at the sub- 4 inch length prior to changing up to a bigger fly not counted in the final total. This, along with the abundant fly life (including Mays and Yellow Mays) bodes well for future seasons. I was very happy to bring 9 larger fish to hand, including three 9-10” fish.

The beat map could do with updating - the footbridge is no longer there and there is a useful footpath to the north of the river which helps with access. Also beat markers (but not the map) suggest that part of the left bank near the properties near the (former) footbridge is private. I didn’t get round to fishing the separate upstream part of the beat.

A great day on a lovely tranquil beat and such good value.

9 Trout