Feedback & Reports

There is a place on this beat that always has a fish or two rising no matter what the conditions and it was a good job today. I took one on the way up the beat and another on my way back a few hours later, both took a small dry. I did have other chances missing half a dozen rises but I suspect they were only small fish.
This really is a beautiful stretch of water and I found myself standing in the warm sunshine looking up river willing there to be a fish or two rising but it just didn’t happen, very difficult on the dry fly with a noticeable lack of emerging insects on the water. There were a few spinners about though, some of which were bright red.

2 Trout

Water very coloured, and only an extreme optimist would fish it expecting to catch a salmon. Being such a person, I fished it anyway. Salmon must be short sighted, as I caught no less than 10 shad. 3 salmon seen, but the rest must have been hiding. Sad to see this lovely river run chocolate brown due to farm runoff. Soil health obviously not a priority in this catchment area. Thank you Mick for you wise advice, always heeded!

10 Other

Had several rises to dry fly but blanked. I'm a novice river angler, but determined to try the Usk again as it is a stunning location.

Water low but coloured. 1 trout 7 inches, 1 out of season grayling 14 inches

1 Trout

Too bright- but lovely afternoon on a delightful stretch of river with stunning Brecon peaks in the distance. No sign of activity except for a few v small fish. We only managed to fish 2 - 6.30pm. We will try again but fish early morning or evening to dusk.

Ideal conditions during morning little wind and cloud cover.The intention was to use dry fly and hopefully Mayfly. We started with a rusty Klink and a grey duster and both caught fish pretty quick Plenty mayfly hatching during the day but saw very few fish rise to them.
Although we tried the mayfly it did not tempt any fish but it was a very pleasant day. We had 6 trout between us weighing upto 1lb All in good condition.

6 Trout

7 Trout, 9 Grayling, 1 Chub

A couple of salmon seen but none caught. Large number of shad in some pools

3 Other

Hot and sunny, very low water, stacks of mayfly coming off during the late afternoon and evening, nymphs and Gray Whulf’s the flies of the day.

We had the whole beat and three of us fished it but its coming up as one rod only here. We also got 12 trout but can’t enter double digits!

12 Trout, 2 Grayling

We approached this beat with some trepidation, having read the reports that suggested a combination of fishing and mountaineering skills would be required to succeed. The most difficult part was in fact the path down to the start of the beat, which is steep in places and has become very overgrown over the final 100 yards. A days work with saws and loppers could make access to the beat much easier. However, once we reached the stream a couple of 70 year olds were able to make progress upstream, and we were rewarded with a series of delightful pools, although casting a fly was always a challenge as virtually all then pools have trees overhanging at some point.

We worked our way to the mid point of the beat where two small side streams enter on the right bank. Not all the pools produced fish, but we did rise fish in a lot of the pools, and the final tally was five beautifully marked wild brown trout up to about 10 inches, although far more were missed. In the final pool, I rose and missed a much larger fish which looked to be at least a pound.

It had taken us about 3 hours to reach this point, so we decided to stop and find the road back to Erwood, which is possible by climbing out of the gorge at the point where the second side stream comes in.

This is a delightful beat, but is definitely challenging, particularly for us older anglers, but well worth the effort.

5 Trout