Feedback & Reports

7lbs spinning. Sea lice. No response to fly although water now perfect for it.

1 Salmon

This was my first time on the Usk. The weather was overcast when I arrived, the river looked in fine form but no fish were showing. I caught quite quickly on a gold head but quickly changed to a dry fly as by mid morning fish were taking flies off the surface. The fly life was spectacular at times with many different flies coming off including Mayflies. By lunch time the sun was shining, it was very bright and the fish stopped showing on the surface but I persisted with a Mayfly imitation as Mayflies were coming off in increasing numbers. I caught no more fish despite my best efforts but this was due to my inexperience rather then the beat as it obviously has plenty of trout as they were taking flies all over when I left...just not mine!
Will be back for another go before too long.

1 Trout

The sun came out around midday when I started fishing from the downstream limit. The river was alive with mayfly and swarms of smaller two tailed spinners (iron blues?), plus small and large birds, mostly unidentified but I thought one was an owl silently flying away. All fish caught on dry fly, mostly using one that bore some resemblance to a mayfly. I kept moving and fished almost the whole beat, which was a lot of wading! 8 wbt between 5 and 9 inches, and spooked countless risers.

8 Trout

Good days fishing on the Edw. Looked perfect for the dries, but very few rises. 2 trout on a Adams, 10 on PTN size 16. 5"-10".

12 Trout

River in good order, weather sunny but with a horrible downstream wind that made fishing awkward and probably kept flylife down. Not many fish showing but a salmon did leap a couple of times at the start of the large shingle. WBT & Grayling taken on deep nymphs and salmon parr on a spider.
Thanks to all at WUF for providing another great place to enjoy.

1 Trout, 3 Grayling, 1 Other

Bright day, clear water. Very few fish rising.

Overall, quite a difficult day - worked hard for the fish I had - all taken on the dry. Managed to winkle out a nice 3/4 pounder from just 8" of water, which was the fish of the day. Lovely stretch of river.

4 Trout

I caught 9 brown trout using a dry fly & dropper method and all the fish were taken on the nymphs. The nymphs were a mix of bead head pheasant tail #16, Hare's Ear bead head jig #16 and a Glister nymph #18 (New Zealand pattern).
I do want to take exception to the beat description in the passport pamphlet as being 'reasonably open and easy to fish' as it was anything but - more like fishing in the Amazon jungle. The foliage coverage was so extensive I actually made only 1 normal fly cast in the 5+ hours of fishing. Otherwise it was all roll casts, short flicks, bow & arrow casts or lots of downstream drifts as I could not cast from the pool's tail. The flood gate implementations made for some fun climbing and manoeuvring too. And the one pool that I caught my best fish on (a 12" brown) was more like the town tip - the pool had in no particular order a Wellington boot, a couple of tyres, a few scattered hub caps & a whole menagerie of other detritus. I guess the farmer who resides just above this pool sees it as an easy dumping ground. And in the earlier sections of the river the banks are extremely hard climb out from (steep, covered in metre high nettles & briars & barbed fencing) which is necessitated due to some very deep pools that are not wadeable. And in the upper sections I had flocks of sheep continually entering the pools as I worked my way up -- causing obvious disturbance & discolouring of the water.
WUF Note: Thank you for the feedback. We will amend the beat details and pass on the information to the Wild Stream volunteers.

9 Trout

1 x bream, couple small carp under 10lb. Very shallow water. Would I fish it again? Not sure.

3 Other

Good fish 1x 1lb 2 oz. All fish returned.

4 Trout