Feedback & Reports

Late p.m. & evening. My first visit to the Clettwr. You'd normally have to go to the Amazon for this sort of experience. Water clear and plenty of it. 3 trout on goldhead nymphs completed an entertaining few hours.

3 Trout

I made my annual trip up the Clettwr gorge (while the family enjoyed the Hay festival) at the end of a damp and windy week. While there was some light rain in the late morning, it was largely dry and overcast with a little of the strong wind making its way to the bottom of the valley as a gentle downstream breeze.
The approach seems more overgrown than last year and fallen trees meant that I ended up sliding down into the stream bed itself perhaps 80m before the start of the beat and walking up from there. There are a few more fallen trees in the lower half of the beat - a particularly big fall is starting to block the flow pretty much due North of Crickadarn. There is a lot of detritus being held by the handful of trunks across the stream and, although it can still flow through a decent gap on the left, another winter or two might see that close up.
Aside from that, the beat continues to have a large number of excellent pools that require a bit of a hands and knees approach but still give decent room to swing a rod. The lower part of the gorge is easier to fish that the upper half which opens out with pasture on either side and trees growing lower down so many more branches getting in the way.

The fishing was as good as ever - plenty of trout in most of the pools prone to a couple of acrobatic leaps immediately on the hook being set. I managed 11 to hand with about twice that being lost after a few seconds of head shaking. Both nymphs and dry flies worked well in dark colours with most fish being around 8" but one coming in at 10". The pool below the ruined water mill where a tiny tributary cascades in was a particular hotspot with some big looking fish moving on the surface however, despite half a dozen splashy rises and a couple of strong pulls on the nymph, I was unable to connect with any of them.

Another lovely day on a great beat, thanks WUF.

11 Trout

I could not get to the beat until 4pm which was too late in the day . Access was frustrating. The footpath is easy to identify, but no white posts to be seen. The obvious path going down towards the stream, continues for some hundreds of yards, but is then obstructed by fallen trees, and stops. There is a fork near the top of the path which takes you along the top of the wood for maybe 400 yards and eventually down to a bridge over the stream, where I then started. Some fly about, but no fish rising. An adventurous beat with so much fallen timber to circumnavigate. A wonderful gorge.

1 Trout

2 trout on weighted pheasant tail nymph. Beautiful morning with river level quite high but water crystal clear. Spooked several fish. Stunning spot.

2 Trout

Well, where do I even start. It is a fantastic beat to fish, but you absolutely need waders. I thought I could get away with just waterproof walking boots but the banks are steep and overgrown beyond imagination, meaning spooked fish and poor accessibility. The ONLY way up the beat is up through the stream, nipping onto the bank if and when you need. On top of this, there are no white posts to follow to the start of the beat, so make sure you take the path AWAY from the village and take the left hand fork when it splits in two. There are fallen trees and times when the path looks like its run out but keep pushing on until you get down closer to the river.

I spent all day climbing, crawling and sliding on my hands and knees to try and land a fish, and somehow in the end I managed to catch one. I did hook another one out of a nice deep pool by the bridge on a nymph but he wriggled himself free (sigh). Never the less, I threw on an Olive wooly bugger as a last resort to sniff out any territorial/ferociously hungry trout and managed to take a beautiful little 6 incher out of a deep pool who smashed the fly, day saved.

This beat is PROPER wild fishing. If you are not prepared to approach it like a military op in stealth on your hands and knees, with a few scratches in the brambles on the way, then go elsewhere.

All in all I will be back, with waders, and cannot wait to do so. Beautiful wild fishing and a point to prove to myself of catching more fish.

1 Trout

The beat may look rough and overgrown, however once you make your way down the steep banks there’s plenty of casting room. Plenty of trout in the river, but very low water made fishing difficult. Several fish hooked but none landed. I will visit again when there are better conditions.

A really wild beat. Loads of trees across the stream which look quite recent falls.
Water level was very low and fish easily spooked. Managed to Induce a few splashy takes but nothing that came to hand.

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

Having fished the first half of this beat last year, I was keen to return and cover the whole thing. A few more trees have fallen over the winter, but there is still plenty of fishable water.

The size, foliage and fallen trees mean most pools need to be approached on hands and knees but it's worth the effort as there genuinely are fish in every pool. There was a good mix of hatching insects and the trout weren't overly picky, variously taking cdc olives, yellow ptn, claret klinkhammer and a flashback black nymph. I think I had a rise to my fly in every pool and lost almost double the 9 that I caught.

The pool where the little tributary cascades into the brook just below the ruined water mill is wonderful - two aggressive rises in the foam produced the biggest fish of the day at 10" and 12".

After the water mill, I confess my knees and back were grumbling a bit so I only fished the pools that I could approach and cast to standing up, meaning I passed up the opportunity to fish a lot more promising water - I needed to conserve energy for the climb out!

A really great beat and a wonderful day out.

9 Trout

Well… amazing, a real adventure. A combination of fishing with scrambling/climbing thrown in! A true mountain stream. It was a bit difficult to find the start of the beat (no white marker posts that I could see), I ended up just guessing really. Also the map of the beat could do with a bit more info on it, because once you are in the gorge you really do lose your bearings and have no idea where you are. There were two foot bridges that were not shown on the map that would help to position yourself. Also there was no info on how long the beat is. I was sure that I had gone past the end of it, but on reflection I still think there was more to go.
It was just the kind of fishing I was after, very tight, some deep pools, cascading water, the odd slow bit… a real variety. The main problem was that there were lots and lots of fallen trees (many of them recent). It was chaos in some places, and pretty dangerous… but I still loved it! In a perfect world some of the fallen trees would be removed, but what a job that would be, near impossible because of the access.
Lots of fish too, all caught on nymphs of a Klinkhammer indicator. Some did come to the dry fly later, but were missed. Overcast with a bit of breeze (hence the need for a bit of weight with the nymphs).
This is a real star of the Wild Stream beats.

15 Trout