Feedback & Reports

Mild weather, river running a little low and the odd fly coming off during the day. 6 trout between 5 and 9 inches, missed several more.
Lots of diversity along this beat, very good.

6 Trout

Fished two Crai beats today - Danycraig in the morning and Upper Crai after lunch. Both fished on 3WT with dry fly - Adams Para or Klinkhammer. I found the two beats quite different. Not much action below the bridge at Danycraig but hooked into 4 WBT above the bridge in slow pools. The 4 fish were between 10" and 14" but am I allowed to tell you about the one that got away? Bent my 3WT double and made several line stripping runs before it broke the line at the hook just as I was about to land it - it had to be 18"-20" fish and would have been a PB - shame. So Danycraig has some big fish in it. Upper Crai gave up 9 WBT and by contrast these were generally much smaller fish although included 3 or 4 at around 10". Very pleasant day fishing in a lovely valley. Either beat is a great half-day.

4 Trout

Fished two Crai beats today - Danycraig in the morning and Upper Crai after lunch. Both fished on 3WT with dry fly - Adams Para or Klinkhammer. I found the two beats quite different. Not much action below the bridge at Danycraig but hooked into 4 WBT above the bridge in slow pools. The 4 fish were between 10" and 14" but am I allowed to tell you about the one that got away? Bent my 3WT double and made several line stripping runs before it broke the line at the hook just as I was about to land it - it had to be 18"-20" fish and would have been a PB - shame. So Danycraig has some big fish in it. Upper Crai gave up 9 WBT and by contrast these were generally much smaller fish although included 3 or 4 at around 10". Very pleasant day fishing in a lovely valley. Either beat is a great half-day.

9 Trout

Just fingerlings today but fun nonetheless on a lovely wild beat.

1 Trout

Started out in Boys Rocks but not a touch for 2 hours before the rapidly rising river forced me out. Moved to a swim lower down and had a 5lb barbel first cast but then struggled to fish effectively due to the amount of silkweed and rubbish coming through on a rising river, hanging on the line and dragging the feeder.
In the 7 hours I was there the river rose over 3 feet and was still coming up when I left.
As always though, thoroughly enjoyed the day despite the challenging conditions!

1 Barbel

River quite low (Glanusk gauge on about 3 inches) and slightly coloured, no sign of salmon. Two small trout caught on small nymphs and returned. A quiet day but a very pleasant beat. There is some lovely salmony water and the walkway is a very convenient casting area, but most of this beat is too stony for wading so I think it must come into its own casting from the bank with slightly more water. I looked for the 'white gate' in vain - if it's the gate I think it must be by the parking area, it lost all its paint a long time ago! The banks adjacent to the parking area are extremely overgrown after this warm and damp summer and although you can wriggle down the path to the water (as long as you are not carrying a made-up rod), there appeared to be no way of getting to the upper part of the beat other than a very tricky wade across the river. Access to the bottom two-thirds is far easier along the public footpath than through the gate.

2 Trout

3 Barbel to 6lbs caught in the first hour but the river was rising steadily and this seemed to put the fish off feeding. We only had one other bite between us in 7 hours and that fish (probably a chub) came off. By the time we left at 4pm it had risen by nearly 2 feet and gone a lovely brown colour! This also meant we had to move swims twice as the rising water effectively washed us off where we had settled in for the day. Really high banks mean there is very limited access to the water and the amount of weed, branches even half trees coming down the river made it a really difficult day. Will try it again but I think river conditions need to be spot on.

3 Barbel

River chocolate and trees coming down in the flood. Half-heartedly fished the slacks to blank. A washout really.

A hard few hours on this fantastic stream that obviously has potential. Fished from 7am-10.30am.
The main river was high carrying lots of colour and unfortunately so was this beat.I very nearly went back but decided to have a walk/fish and use it as a recce for the future. With the Water 6 inches above my ankles I could only just make out the metal lace eylets and with the water just below my knee they were not visible at all. Conditions were fishable but only just. And air temp was down to 6 degrees C.
A small trout fell to a GRHE variant on the 3rd cast. I then fished the next 40 mins without a touch. Wading up the stream was slow going with the conditions.
I changed to a bright Red Tag with gold bead and first cast it took the best fish of the day at 10 inches. After that, takes were more regular but with the coloured fast water I was bumping and loosing far more than I was hooking.
The natural nature of the stream meant that every type of presentation had to be used from every angle which was great!
I fished using a Tenkara 10ft rod and single barbless fly. In hind-sight I would have fished a version of the Czech style in the deeper runs as these areas were the most productive but it needed to be bouncing the stream bed.
I'll be back as this beat has real potential!

9 Trout

8 Trout