Feedback & Reports

A bright sunny day which became overcast early afternoon when the fish began to bite. From then on all action for the rest of the day. Barbel of 8lb 12oz and 8lb 2oz were pb's for both of us plus plenty of Chub to 4lb 8oz. Method was pellet and groundbait feeders with a small pellet on hook.
This was our first visit to The Creel and we had a great day's fishing.

8 Barbel, 26 Chub

This beat is ideal for an evening session when the days are long – we got three and a half hours fishing in. The river was slightly turbid when we arrived but cleared through the evening. The new fencing has improved the beat no end with much more bankside vegetation and is to a design that is different to any we have encountered elsewhere – access is much easier than on other fenced beats.
When we arrived I put a size 16 olive parachute on – but that didn’t stay on for long. The martins were swooping – and taking mayflies! Duns were hatching and there were a significant number of spinners as the evening wore on – in July….
The deeper water at the bottom of the beat yielded a fat small trout and a similar sized grayling to the mayfly so the omens were good as we moved up. Another fish rose on the tail of a pool – suspected a similar sized fish as I covered it – only to hear a loud splash in the run behind me. Mayflies were still around as were some very large almost black sedges and a fish in the run was enjoying supper. Don’t tell the chalk stream boys but I sent my parachute mayfly down the run and when it got to where the fish was I gave it a twitch. Wallop – a lovely 13 inch trout. As I was landing that one there was an even bigger disturbance further down the run – so back down went the mayfly, further down before the twitch and thump…the reel screamed as a good fish headed down the pool. 5 minutes later a beautiful 17 inch trout came to hand – perfect in fin and colouration. At that point I would happily have packed up and gone home but there were more fish to be caught. We ended up with 13 trout in the seven to nine inch bracket apart from those two mentioned, along with a couple of grayling - all safely returned. James got broken by a similarly large fish that took him under a tree….
The evening started with a chat with the friendly farmer who was also there to see us off – many thanks. The fencing kept the bullocks just far enough away although they were determined to see if they could lick us over the fences – always inquisitive. But fantastic fishing….thank you – and we didn’t even get to fish our favourite usually most productive pool, ran out of time.

13 Trout, 2 Grayling

One trout was caught and both rods fished on worm. Having not fished the reservoir for many years I was surprised to find that it now holds a large amount of perch. I feel that there is a lack of information boards regarding fishing areas around the dam and we failed to find what time we could fish until.
It seems that the upkeep of the reservoir is not what it should be which saddens me as this is a beautiful reservoir in an idyllic location.

1 Trout

1 x Brown Trout with worm, 1 x Brown Trout on fly.

2 Trout

Fished the afternoon. There was an olive hatch at about 2pm. Caught on klinkhamer style greenwells. Missed a few others and frightened some as river was clear. This happened mostly in the flat watered parts of pools. A relaxing few hours in the company of a couple of soaring red kites.

1 Trout

Lots of fish moving through the beat. Water carrying some colour but clearing slowly throughout the day. Put a fly through Little Stream a few times and span the rest.

Pulled even more bloody himalayan balsam

4 Barbel, 5 Chub

Excellent days fishing on interesting bit of water 7 fish caught on either bead head pheasant tail nymph with peacock dubbing collar or green copper john fished under klinkhammer other fish hairwing sedge. Most of fish caught in last 2 hours of day. ALL fish were released

8 Trout

Three Wild Carp caught on bread and sweetcorn. Float fished from the northern bank.

3 Other

Three of us fished over 2 days. We only found 3 accessible pegs all upstream from the car park area ending at what is known as Vanstone Pool. Although we walked the length of the stretch downstream, we could not find access to those pegs marked on the map as Parson Tree, Rope Pool and Ford Stream. Suggest some signage would be helpful. We did catch but not prolifically. Our best fish were two Barbel over 8lbs and two chub over 4lbs. Chub were mainly caught with trotting bacon grill and sweetcorn. Barbel were caught on a variety of hair rigged baits:- 8mm and 10mm Halibut pellet, 8mm Robin Red and sweetcorn.
It is a lovely stretch of water but we feel that we didn't fulfill its potential due to not being able to find the pegs shown on the map. The water was cloudy on our first day but a little clearer on the second. We would be happy to return again if we could be sure of easier, clearer access to all the pegs on the whole stretch.

10 Barbel, 22 Chub