Feedback & Reports

Bead head and traditional spiders accounted for all fish. Plenty of surface activity too but had no dries with me to take advantage.

2 Trout, 7 Grayling

When we arrived we found that the owner was guiding a party of salmon anglers, so we spent most of the day on the lower part of the beat. Fish were rising in short bursts of about 5 minutes, followed by a lull of up to 30 minutes. Most of our fish were caught on small dries, size 20 midge or griffith Gnats, but also caught on gold bead nymphs between hatches. The fish were a good average size of about 12-13 inches but no lunkers caught, although we did manage to break our leaders on 2 good fish, either due to incompetence or faulty leaders.
We met up with the owner later in the day who apologised for the fact that we had to share the fishing with his party. He then showed us all the best lies for grayling and even gave us a couple of his favorite patters to try. This was very much appreciated and I hope that we will be back to fish this fabulous beat many times in the future.

15 Grayling

This was our first time on this beat, upper section very inaccessible and limited swims on lower end. However MF did find fish on lower section, had 3 good barbel on maggot feeder.
TR struggled in the next swim, tried both maggot and pellet feeder and several baits trotting all to no avail. However a very pleasant day in wonderful surroundings.

3 Barbel

It was a real pleasure to fish this beat. RB fished the top meadow all day and caught 1 barbel in the evening. RW fished from the rocks in the woods to begin with, but it proved to be a tackle graveyard. The one barbel hooked here resulted in a cut off on a snag, so a move was called for to the lower meadows. 4 barbel to 8lb 3 oz were caught before the light started to fade.
Highlights of the day were several sightings of a large dog otter, and also a couple of young otters playing and squabbling noisily below the woods.

5 Barbel

Beautiful stretch of water, well kept, access good. We walked the whole beat but could not find the bigger grayling but was good fun trying. Plenty of smaller fish rising which took the dry fly. This beat was so quiet and out of the way with owls hooting, woodpeckers tapping away and kingfishers, there was something to see all the time. A very well set out beat, enjoyed it and will be back soon. Sorry for the late report but was extremely ill for a couple of days. Thanks to owner for phoning me back when I got a little lost.

6 Trout, 4 Grayling, 5 Other

Fished lower end of the fishery, 5 Barbel, best fish 10lb 8oz, 2 Chub 4lb.

5 Barbel, 2 Chub

Very shallow and weedy stretch, and was hard going. Three chub and a single barbel on pellet.

1 Barbel, 3 Chub

1 Trout

Very tough going, low flow in water and very limited rises, what did rise was brought to hand: 5 oos trout all 12-16 inches. The few grayling and remaining oos trout came to very heavily weighted shrimp patterns. The trout was 9 inches grayling two at 14 inches 1 at 8 inches. Hard to locate grayling today...I have fished the beat adjoining the Leen upstream and been very lucky to witness otters working the pools with deadly precision..not so lucky for the fishery and fish stocks.. so maybe they have attacked the Leen also. My guess would be most definitely.

6 Trout, 3 Grayling

A very good day, starting at 11a.m. I was into four grayling on GRHE nymph on the first four casts! However, they soon dried up as the fish started to rise. Various dries were tried to no avail, there were a lot of small brown ephemerids hatching - not sure what they were (anybody?). A change to a Grayling Steel Blue was the answer and by 4p.m. I had released 14 grayling to 1.5lb plus two out of season WBT, all at the bottom of the beat, in the pool above Lower Planks.

2 Trout, 14 Grayling