Feedback & Reports

First time on this stretch, tough day! River at a good level, but the weed is dying off & it caused problems! Fishing any further than a rod length out and you was reeling in within 2 min, due to heavy weed. If we fished a rod length out, we might have got 5min if lucky. Once we realised this was our only option we caught a few fish. Beautiful scenery! The hill is a killer in the rain, but kinda adds to the adventure!

3 Barbel, 7 Chub

Shared a rod with my son and despite torrential rain showers and strong gusty wind and low water levels spent a great afternoon with half a dozen wbt including two at 10 & 11 inches landed and released. Plenty of flylife- caddis and small olives even in the rain with plenty of rising fish in the deeper spots refusing elk hair sedge flies but immediately taking a para adams. Cowgates halfway up the beat in a serious state of disrepair but no sign of animal induced erosion as bank side fences either side are all intact and of good quality. Lots of leaf litter in the river more due to storms than autumn but it won't be long.

6 Trout

1 Sea Trout

Not to many hatches coming off the wind and rain did make conditions tricky, river height was a good level we did pick some rising fish with olives fish also taken on the french leader in the tail of the pools best 2 grayling close to 2lbs

2 Trout, 19 Grayling

Unfortunately I arrived too late in the day and decided not to fish.

2 Barbel

2 Trout

6 Barbel, 3 Chub

6 Trout, 8 Grayling

Just over a dozen trout between us, mostly small but one good fish of one and a half pounds came to the nymph in shallow fast water, as did most of the other fish. Our enjoyment and fishing was ruined about an hour or so after starting by a pair of ignorant canoeists who decided to paddle straight through the beat in low water conditions. After they had been politely informed that they were trespassing, they refused to acknowledge and then proceeded to beat their paddle blades against the river bed as they made their way downstream - with predictable impact on the quality of the fishing
You look forward to a day's fishing. You pay your £30 a head, and then you get that kind of an experience. They had clearly either not read, or just ignored the advice on the WUF site. Not a great advert for partnership working.
WUF Note: While access arrangements cover the large majority of reasonable canoeists there will always be an element who insist on ignoring them, wherever and however much the arrangements are advertised. It is important to remember that these people would paddle whether there were arrangements in place or not. Such militant attitudes are enforced by the stance of certain canoe organisations who refuse to accept the law that ownership of a section of river includes the water that passes through it. We ask that if anglers are faced with this situation to do as DS & LE did - politely inform them that they are trespassing and if it is an organised group, to take the name of the organisation and pass it on to us.

WUF note: we have made geat strides in managing canoeing and generally there is a reaistic level of compliance. When there are difficulties it invariably centres around people who enjoy looking for trouble, such as experienced here. Their behavoir is inexcusable

15 Trout