Feedback & Reports

15lbs hen on black flying c
Carrots beat

1 Salmon

Arrived mid afternoon to the beat to find little sign of any fish rising. I decided to fish the lower part just above the bridge and managed to get a substantial trout to take an Olive Emerger. This fish fought very hard and managed to detach itself from the fly within a few feet of my net. I then repeated this a further twice in the space of half an hour so all-in-all a bit frustrating but still very enjoyable fishing for a couple of hours on this lovely beat.

Lovely stretch of river and lovely day, warm and sunny for once. Very little insect and bird life seen on river. Would have expected to see Dippers, but none seen. A dead heron in the first field - a portent of the day as it turned out. Wading very treacherous owing to rocks being covered with much brown algal growth, which was extremely slippery underfoot - a wading staff was absolutely mandatory. One rising fish seen in the Junction pool in the early afternoon and two or three small rising fish in the Quarry pool in the evening, otherwise nothing. Fished from 1 PM to 8:30 PM with dry flies and then a team of nymphs covering all the pools and likely runs between the pools and only had one take from a very small trout in the Quarry pool. There was no true evening rise, although it might have happened after I left. The fish that I saw appeared to be feeding on gnats laying eggs on the surface of the water. Obviously, a bit of a disappointing day for me. I am very concerned about the amount of algal growth because this does not look normal for the river and I wonder whether the water quality has suffered from agricultural run off. I live locally so will make further visits (without a fishing rod!) to check on this beat to see if conditions improve - or not.

Nice weather at last, in the sense of sunny with an air temperature of 14-15 but perhaps a bit of cloud would have encouraged the fly life more. As it was there was a trickle of olives from noon to 2pm but only a few fish rising, none of which I could persuade to take my offering. They were more receptive to nymphs and had my timing been better I might have improved on the five trout I caught. No sign of the otters today but plenty of pied wagtails about.

5 Trout

Lovely warm and dry day. River low and clear. Lots of very nervous trout spotted. 3 fish taken on weighted nymphs biggest 8 inches. Not much surface activity but a few (missed) splashy rises to klinks.

3 Trout

Fish were very easy to spook, but rising periodically for tiny olives. Sunny and very clear water. Beautiful beat!

1 Trout

There were a few fish in the beat but Alas! none for me. A lovely beat in super surroundings I has a really enjoyable day.

River a few inches over summer level. Sunny day but strong cold wind. Plenty of flies in air and on water but few rises. Caught 4 trout up to 11in on dry fly.

4 Trout

I don't mean to abuse the catch return system but I thought other anglers, as they fish the Skenfrith beat of the Monnow, may appreciate some thoughts. We all have places where we learned to fish - a brook, a lake, a village pond. I was lucky enough to have this beat as my learning ground. My grandfather sub-let a day a week from about 1980 for 20 odd years, in addition to his salmon days on the Wye at Symonds Yat and Preston on Wye and he taught me to fish here. I clearly inherited the fishing genes from him as he was as obsessed as I was. There's a stretch of slower water more than half way down the beat, clear apart from reeds on one side, before you go through the woods. This was always my favourite spot. I can still remember him laying out a beautiful line with his cane rod to a rising fish during the mayfly. I also remember helping him over a stile, well into his eighties, when he turned to me sadly and admitted he was getting too old to go fishing any more. I remember most fish I caught here over 25 years. An early one, from the fast water in the top run after the bridge on a homemade worm fly, with the exhilarating flash of gold underwater and the glance behind me to my father. Or, the one on my own garish green creation, idly dibbled from a high flood-collapsed bank. The bottom run in front of the house was always a place where others seemed to catch fish but it was never somewhere I succeeded. I learned what craft I have on these waters and I still can walk every inch in my mind and I will until the day I die. I don't fish regularly here any more but will from time to time. When you fish from the beach, about a third of the way down, think of countless happy family picnics and where my own son caught his first trout. Its a very special place to me and I am thrilled that the WUF can make it available to so many others. PS - the fly that always did best for me (perhaps because it was the only one I could tie at the time and I was determined to use my own flies) was the Tups Indispensible. I'm never without one now....

0.15m on gauge and looking clear. Not much fly life and the swallows were scarce. Two caught as targeted rises and two in tail of pool with no prior indications which included an oos grayling. All took a Kites Imperial, but I suspect the Iron Blue will soon be out of the box.

3 Trout, 1 Grayling