Feedback & Reports

Fished for a couple of hours yesterday evening. River definitely showing signs of spring - bluebells on the banks and plenty of fish rising. 4 trout to 10" with, as ever, loads of others missed. All took an f-fly.

After overnight rain and showers during day, river rose. River becoming fuller and coloured by early afternoon. Negligible hatch, and little surface activity from the trout. Rose 2 fish and caught a small one on dry fly, before changing to nymph. This was unsuccessful. What a difference a day makes (in the words of the song !!) from the excellent conditions of 29th April.

29 april fished glan yr afon,caught 7 trout between us on klinkhammer (golden olive),and greenwell spiders.30 april fished dinas abercynrig caught 12 trout plenty of olives off ,did well with klinkhammers and spiders,all fish returned.

Richard
1 brown trout 10" returned.

Steve
1 brown trout 3", 3 brown trout 9",
1 brown trout 7", all returned.

7 trout, 2 @ 10", one at 15" which went like a rocket!! One taken on a black shuttlecock buzzer, the rest on heavy nymphs.

Water levels very low.

One of those rare days when conditions were good in all areas - nice river height, water not too cold (10 C), air temperature rising to 18 C, cloudy with sunny periods. Olives started to appear around 12.30pm, but not in big numbers, with a few Late March Brown around 2pm. Rise lasted until 3pm with some activity until 5pm. Caught 20 trout on dry Parachute Adams, with 7 over 1lb 8oz, 4 of which were 2lb or over, heaviest 2lb 4oz.
Took two 2lb fish. A lovely day, and one of my most productive in over 20 years fishing the Usk.

Cliff and I fished the upper Honddu on beat 33 after I spoke to you on our way back from our abortive Devon trip. It was simply the most beatiful setting of any of the stretches I have ever fished. The fishing was pretty good too. I had four fish to 14 inches and all over ten inches. Cliff hooked a couple and got broken by one. The fly hatches were remarkable. There were flies in large numbers and of number of species some of which I hadn't seen before. We must be the only anglers to make a 700 mile round trip to fish a stream 60 miles from home.

Here are some results - there has been a bit of a hiatus in producing these,because we have been moving house (same town, higher on the hill) and have been off-line. I can report that the new rod/tackle/fly-tying room is now organised although the rest of the house is in chaos. Despite, or maybe because of this, the Domestic Authority has authorised fishing again, so my son and I took off for the river and we got a few days in.

13 April, Buckland South: blank, although I lost a good trout on a nymph in the head of the Preserve. Nothing rising in the Mill Pool. You may say "sour grapes," but it does strike me this is not a lot of trout fishing for the money, although it looks very good salmon fishing value and a beautiful spot of course.

15 April, Dulas beat R42: 2 x 6 inch trout. The Foundation's team were coppicing and fencing in the middle of the beat, which may account for all the nervous-looking fish lurking in the lower section.

22 April, Brecon Town Water: 7 x trout to 14".

24 April, Upper Escley Brook Beat R36: 4 x trout including 13" and 14". This is an awful lot of fishing for the money, with pools all the way up! I like this one but could barely get through it in the day and it would be quite suitable for two anglers leap-frogging. The higher up you go, the more fish there seem to be - I got the impression it hasn't been fished much. Plus, the low flow and the sandstone slabs it runs over makes for very clear pools and everything is very visible. Usually I blew it and was probably spooking 9 out of 10 fish, but saw some large ones. I even managed to surprise an outsize eel (I trod on it while wading). I wonder what the reson is for the high average size - possibly the series of high waterfalls (one of them is over 6 feet) limit upstream spawning travel and reduce small fish recruitment?

26 April, Honddu Maes y Beran Beat R32: 1 x 7" trout. This stream near Llanthony does not seem to be as lively as it is lower down.

Otherwise I had a few trips to regular Usk beats at Usk Town, Kemys, Abergavenny and Mardy and all were reasonably good sessions. Fly-life is now quite mixed, like the weather. A few grannoms continued, but not in massive hatches. A few large dark olives still. I've seen just a few march browns coming off at Usk and in larger numbers at Brecon, where an imitation accounted for a few. It's funny to think this is the fly which the river used to be famous for. Hawthorns began to fall early, or at least before St Mark's day, and I had a couple of hawthorn-feeding fish from Kemys on a small black Klinkhammer. The Yellow Mays had already started on the Usk Town Water today, which seems early. And finally, I'm pretty sure I identified the large brook dun in the Escley Brook.

Having driven up from Cardiff straight after a night shift I arrived at the beat fearing the worst. However, the driving rain and blustery winds experienced on the way up started to ease by about 9am and things were looking up. Decided to stay close to the top end of the beat(and the shelter of my car) for a couple of hours while the weather decided what it was doing and it was here that all the action happened.
Caught 1 grayling of about 12Oz on a brown PTN but missed 4 or 5 other fish, 1 being of a notable size. A cold wind developed around midday and no further action occurred. At 3pm torrential rain stopped play and by 4pm my lack of sleep meant it was time to head home. Compared to my recent fishing experiences a very enjoyable day none the less.

Visited the River Usk for the first ever time yesterday. Not sure why I have never fished it before? Despite the best efforts of the English or should I say Welsh weather to spoil the day I did actually manage to catch a few.
It was hard going with a strong downstream wind for most of the day.(It did relent a bit in the afternoon possibly to make way for the hail storm and torrential rain).
I managed 6 fish for the day all nice trout all fish were returned.

ps I really enjoyed the day and the view of surrounding countryside is stunning!