Feedback & Reports

A really interesting and enjoyable day - the Wild Streams day, with WUF and the Lugg and Arrow association. Thank you to all who organised this event. We met at the Riverside Inn, for the briefing, introductory talk, and allocation of beats. Lots of useful information and advice about small stream trout fishing.
Mowley Wood is a lovely stretch of the Arrow; my colleague caught six brownies, I learnt a lot about this sort of fishing particularly, get a shorter rod.
Back to the Inn for five, for tea and cakes.

Fished from early morning until 10am, started in the bay and saw a nice sunrise, fish rose right in front of me just to tease. Nothing caught on my bottom fished worm, moved to boat slipway and caught a small perch (why are they all so small, I would have thought that there would be some bigger ones, maybe they inhabit the murky depths!), chap to my right hooked and self released a nice rainbow. I moved back to the bay out of the wind and gave up at 10am to retreat to a nice cup of tea and a bacon sarnie. I am back this weekend with my Dad, he has looked forward to this trip for ages so I am keeping my abject failure from him and I pray to the fishing gods that the trout decide that they are hungry. P.S I even tried float fishing using a pine cone as a weighted float, it worked ok but still no fishies!

1 Other

Really helpful information from the beat owner made finding the beat, access and fishing easy. I wish all WUF beats had owners like Barry.
A salmon took my fly as I was stripping in to recast on Woodstream, it jumped and came off.

Good day at top end away from the crowds. Very windy but once fish were found sport was excellent. 4 fish around 2 lbs each retained and 3 released. I find this fishery always fishes best on a fast intermediate with some type fry imitation. All fish taken on an olive green and mylar Zonker.
Shame about the rubbish left behind by some anglers. Welsh Water - do something about this!

7 Trout

1 Grayling, 1 Other

9 trout to 8 inches. River low not much hatching. It would be helpful if the beat map was more detailed as I was unsure of the boundaries i.e. where is black bat bridge?

9 Trout

Trout taken on a mixture of dries and nymphs, best caught was 39cm on a size 18 black gnat. Saw a much larger fish cruising the margin late in the day approximately 3lb but it wasn't playing!

25 Trout

The water was low and algal scum on the bottom due to too much sediment and nutrient enrichment, but the stream was still nice in the top section and lots of fish rising. 12 trout were caught to 1lb. Another 6 inches of water would have been just what the doctor ordered!

12 Trout

Beautiful piece of water running over bedrock with real upland feel to it. 8 nice trout came to the klinkhammer and the little nymph. Good day on the water.

8 Trout

Many thanks to the volunteers who gave up their time for the Wild Streams Day. I have a couple of observations that may help next time.

As a total novice to stream fishing, I found my beat (Eardisland) very hard with only two points of access and the water too deep to get very far upstream.It would have been great to have had someone with me to show me the ropes, for an hour or so to get me started.I did get a visit later on which was really helpful - thanks for that.

The directions and map of the beat were very good.

A simple powerpoint showing some tactics and flies at the beginning would have been very helpful.

The meetingpoint at the Riverside Inn was very good and well positioned to the beats - excellent choice of venue (I can recommend the fillet steak...).

Thanks for setting it up and I look forward to the next one - I would be happy to pay a bit more for some tuition.