Feedback & Reports

First time on this beat for me, and I liked it a lot. Excellent access - thanks to whoever had strimmed the balsam and other undergrowth. Fished from 1715 to about 2000, on a beautiful sunny evening, with sandpiper and kingfisher on the river. As the river runs north-south here, the evening sun reflecting off the water into my eyes made seeing the fly challenging - I was fishing a duo, with a Sturdy's Fancy and a parachute Adams. A bramble scratch a week or two ago had caused a leak in one wader, so I became progressively soggier. I missed a good few, but after a struggle got one decent 38cm grayling on the spider in fast water at the mouth of the Edw. I took it home for supper.

1 Grayling

4 Trout

Nice to get a warmer day this August although the northerly wind blowing downstream did not help presentation. 9 fish in the morning from Lady Alexander's on a mixture of small dry flies and a further 3 on nymph from the deeper faster section at head of pool when things had gone quite with the dry fly. Lost one very decent fish while nymphing. Was the brown of a old large fish and managed to shake out barbless hook but not before rolling in front of me - would have been my largest grayling by a long way.
In the afternoon moved up to Abernant Stream - waded up full length and had nothing - worked my way back down and had 15 on gsb. Majority in the range of 8 to 10 ", a few a bit larger.
Hooked and lost a lot of fish on barbless hooks - would have had well over 40 fish otherwise.
Also enjoyed the airshow - they do fly very low!

27 Grayling

Not fished this beat before & so we were grateful for Mick's advice & company..Water a little high for this beat we were told but it fished well for most of the pools.Plenty of coloured fish showing but with the length of time they may have been resident and the water temperature like a warm bath we were up against it perhaps?Canoeists were all very polite including several parties of youngsters.Summer fishing can be hard work at times!

Hard fighting immaculate 15lb carp caught on pellet

1 Other

After catching two fish on the dry fly in my first pool I thought it was going to be a real red letter day but from thereon it went quiet and I only ended up with one more fish, on the nymph. All sense of time disappeared down there - 7 lovely hours spent and I only got just past the first footbridge.

A short video of the highlights can be found here: https://youtu.be/CDH7f7p1msE

Such a special place

3 Trout

River higher than normal fast and quite weedy. Fished on bottom pool, lots and lots of small barbell, too many to count all between 1-2 lb. Beware when booking this beat start early or later on in day because of heavy boat traffic between 10.30-17.00 at this time of year.

Less fish today but bigger, spoilt by too many canoeists.

5 Barbel, 1 Chub

A good day's fishing and a fair amount of walking. Plenty of nice water to have a go at. Caught from beats 3 and 4. Only a nibble was the reward for the trek down to beat 6. Legered meat and pellets the method.

1 Barbel, 9 Chub

This is a cumulative report based on 3 x 30 minute lunch time visits last week. 3 fish, 11, 14 and 15 inch. The Tarrell holds some large trout by wild stream standards, but they are incredibly wary. Best method recently has been to fish with a French leader and a single 3mm jig nymph to get down into the deeper holes. A lot of the deeper pools hold more fish than initially meets the eye, so would recommend spending 5 minutes (or more) simply watching for fish before you even think about casting or wading.

3 Trout