Feedback & Reports

Thought it was about time I gave the Whittern beat a recce. Always seem to end up at the rather lovely Titley or Mowley wood beats! Rather lovely here too and the peace and quiet is the same as the other beats, feels like you could be hundreds of miles away from civilisation and I do enjoy that!
Of course the river was down to its bones and the fish (of which there seem to be a good number) were super spooky and its times like this in clear water conditions you get reminded how good a trout's eyesight is! A few very nice sized fish where spotted...briefly.
Winkled out a few handsome Arrow beauties to a dry cdc elk hair fished to likely looking spots, the markings and colours on the Arrow fish is always really beautiful.
It is quite a wooded beat, particularly up at Lyonshall wood section, and a good beat overall for a warm sunny day I reckon and worth a bit of bushwacking to find some super pools and runs.
There is a fair bit of large (some very large!) woody debris in the river but just adds to its character and easy enough to get around if needs be.
Now I have 3 Arrow beats to try and decide from in future! Life's hard at times ....

5 Trout

Cracking beat with good access through fields. Loads of places to explore and different swims all the way along. Fished all day roughly catching every half hour or so. An absolute must and a credit to whoever owns this beat. Thanks for a great days fishing I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4 Barbel, 8 Chub

Beautiful beat, very low and clear however. Perhaps could do with a touch of rain! Saying that it was an interesting session. I caught 8 chub and one small Barbel on last swim on left bank at the end of the Rapids. And then 2 more Chub from the first swim next to the bridge. My dad had one chub from a middle swim and hooked into what was a nice Barbel! But lost it...fish activity really picked up here at the usual 5pm onwards, being so shallow the Barbel were waiting until less light was present. Would come back here again for sure!

1 Barbel, 11 Chub

A slow day in a lovely setting.

1 Barbel, 2 Chub

4 hours in the morning on Craig Llyn, fishing pocket water with 3 weight brook rods and drys all taken on usual sedges and emergers
Afternoon at Dolgau with many thanks to Richard for fishing his beat. Large hatch of flying red ants carpeted the river with fish rising everywhere in splashy takes. Spent a frustrating hour trying to match the hatch. Yellow Greenwell spider in tan and tupsley indispensable were the only flies that worked. Tried all other patterns with no success. Should have had a lot of fish but still looking for the pattern to match that hatch.

11 Trout, 9 Grayling

Fished using the duo method. Water low and navigating up the stream difficult due to fences across water. Fished first section of beat only. No fish caught.

The fishing gods were not with me, I came, I saw, I had a massive blank!! Super lovely beat though, will come again.

Conditions very difficult as river very low and clear. Caught regularly and any bait seemed to work. Fished bottom end and last swim seemed very snaggy. Good day on a lovely fishery.

9 Barbel, 21 Chub

Quiet day with few rises & no takers on wets/nymphs until a carpet of tiny ants started arriving c. 4pm, prompting a feeding frenzy across the river. Matching the hatch proved difficult as nothing was airborne and all my smallest flies were ignored (griffiths gnat etc.) Eventually tempted a couple of grayling on a tiny klinkhammer from the Green Bank tail, including a hard-fighting 16" fish which needed almost 10 minutes to recover itself.
Even the resident ducks joined in the ant-fest, whizzing round the pool in flotilla formation slurping up as many as they could. The carpet was still arriving when I left c. 7pm, so there must have been trillions of ants and a lot of full-to bursting fish- I saw from another report same thing at Dolgau so they must have hatched somewhere way upstream.

2 Grayling, 1 Other

River still very low. No sign of barbel. Chub to 4lb.

3 Chub