Feedback & Reports

Temperature just above 1 degree at 9am with a very cold easterly wind. No signs of life despite best efforts with bugs and nymphs. Lovely beat and suspect will fish better once warmed up, including myself!!

Great Spring day on the river no fish seen or 'felt', maybe should have toasted the water or something?! Possibly not surprising given temperature of river which apparently is below the sea temperature which itself is at an all time low of 7 degrees! Thanks again to Don for his invaluable advice, I'll be back!

Lovely day on the water. Very cold, but good to be out. Water temperature was 3 degrees all day. Air temp 4 degrees with freezing wind chill. The old kelly kettle and the sight of dippers kept spirits high. Reasonable LDO hatch at 1pm and some fish randomly rising at 3pm for about 5-10 minutes. In my excitement I managed to put all rising fish down, but it was still great be out on the water after a cold winter. Dippers, grey wagtails and much more all in attendance.... Many thanks WUF for another lovely day. No trout caught this time, but I will be back when water temperature is more conducive to feeding trout.

4 hours, very pleasant, but cold! Nothing caught. Saw a mink, might have eaten all the fish?

Artic conditions and snow on the hills. Wagtails and chiffchaffs enjoyed a few lunch time LDO's but the trout understandably did not. A useful couple of hours early season casting practice.

Freezing cold, water not great for fly, but caught a 12 lb springer spinning with a black flying 'C' on Beat 6. No fish showing and no one else fishing.

1 Salmon

Need I mention that it was another cold day? Water at 3 degrees. Not a fish nor an insect seen. After fishing all the likely water as deep as possible without a touch, in mid-afternoon made a final switch in tactics and caught 2 fish on successive casts in mid-water and that was it. It has been a week requiring persistance...

2 Trout

It is two years since I fished this beat and the access to the river has been greatly improved with a number of styles in place. I should have taken a wading stick (probably my age). It was cold but there was a hatch that got going around 11.30am which were small brown olives. I managed my only trout with a copper head brown nymph size 16 fished upstream with an indicator - size was around 1lb 1/4. As the day went on we found a still piece of water just down from the vicarage pool where fish were rising but our flies did not interest them. We met the owner who was very helpful as I had not fished the top end of the beat before. We packed in at 4.00pm as we were frozen.

1 Trout

Water too high and a bitter east wind made the day difficult. Colour just OK for the minnow but not clear enough for the fly. Fished the Vanstone and Corner Tree. The latter semed to fish well. Too high for the upper pools. Nothing seen all day.

I spent a very enjoyable 3 hrs working my way up this beat. Conditions were 4 deg, light snow and water level good. Not a fly in sight unsurprisingly, so very pleased with my 3 WBT all taken on a size 16 PTN gold head fished below a Klink NZ style. All fish were about 6 inches. I was using a 7ft 3wt which seemed about right. Despite its size there are some very deep pools which just cry big fish and I would have loved to bounced some bugs through them CZ style so if you can be bothered to carry a few rods with you then worth a go. I bought some knee pads for today's session and they really came in handy.

The only downsides to this beat are that towards the top there is quite a few tyres, pallets and other evidence of humans. Also I shared the beat with a boy coarse fishing and a found a bag a ground bait further down so I worry that river gets a lot more fishing (and not always fair either) than the foundation think.

But for less than a tenner I think this beat is a well worth a look. When the temp starts to rise so will the fish and I suspect you could take a lot of wild fish here.

3 Trout