Feedback & Reports

3 Browns caught on gold head. Water clear but swims will be inaccessible in a couple of weeks due to vegetation. Had to cut visit short as farmer fertilising in fields.

Chris Howell caught his first ever salmon from the Vanstone pool. Fresh Fish weighed 11 lbs and took a F/C.
A H lost a fly caught fish at the net from the dog hole.
Mick gave a great introduction to the water.

1 Salmon

Salmon 16lbs caught 11am. lovely fish, been in the river for about a week, good fight

1 Salmon

Glad I made the long trip today! River very clear with a good flow, mainly olives and midge but other types also out. Saw a couple of splashy rises when setting up so went with the para adams. Found fish willing to rise just about everywhere, more so when I switched to a para olive as that was the main fly. Eventually landed 20+, from 6" to 12", and missed or lost as many - mainly from the slow water where they could see the leader. They have certainly switched on now, what a great day.

20 Trout

Fished for about 5 hours on an overcast day with an increasing downstream breeze. River low and clear with about half a dozen fish seen rising. 8 trout, mostly 6-9 inches, caught with a similar number unhooking themselves. 5 were caught on CDC dry flies and 3 caught nymphing with a tungsten beaded nymph.
Note: The several pieces of silver foam that have been put over the barbed wire fences to enable you to reach the start of the beat are breaking up and need replacing. Luckily I had brought a tea towel with me which enabled me to get over them without ripping my waders.

8 Trout

My first time to this beat and it was a pleasant change not to have to duck under the branches or negotiate barbed wire to get to it. Casting was very easy too. The trout were rising quite well to hawthorn flies and even took my imitation despite the fact that this had long since lost the trailing legs to bankside vegetation on another beat. The beat does need more water though and a good wash-through. I can't help thinking that anything much larger than 6 inches here will be picked off by avian predators, as there is not a lot of cover.

4 Trout

A difficult day on the dries as only one smallish section had any significant amount of trout rising. The fish we did get were a good size on olive patterns. The wind was quite strong downwind which did not help our upstream dry fly casting but we rose and lost a few others too so reasonable action. No evening rise. We watched an otter from the high bank swimming under the water and popping its head up now and again - magical ! Will return as I'm sure there will be better rises on other days.

3 Trout

Went down to beat 6 at about 5 pm. In the space of about 20 minutes on a small Alexander tube fly,i had a chub of around 5lb a perch of over 2lb and a fabulous brown trout of 2.5 lb.Also saw a salmon which ignored everything.Try again soon.All the beats in good condition now and fish well distributed throughout.

The river was low and clear, but the weather was favourable with a temperature of 16 degrees, overcast for much of the day, and only a light breeze. There were sporadic hatches throughout the day, with the fish responding to each new hatch. Notably the fish would not take any surface fly, natural or imitation, but fed mainly just below the surface with slow almost silent takes distinguished by an appearance of a tail or fin. Consequently most of the fish were taken on small sparsely dressed spider patterns fished a few inches below the surface. The best fish of the day was 1.75lb.

8 Trout

A good day plenty of fly hatches but not many fish rising.

6 Trout