Feedback & Reports

5 x trout 13-15 inches, spiders. A last minute diversion to the middle Usk after the upper Wye rose a foot and muddied up during the night. As you might perhaps guess, these were taken during a large dark olive hatch between 1.30pm and 3.00pm. Generally speaking, rather than a sudden and intense spring olive hatch which lasts 15 minutes, I would prefer a sparse hatch of fly over a longer period - this was one of the latter. For the rest of the day, the river might have been empty.
I have to say that, so far, we have all been finding this a really tough spring and very slow to start for trouting. I think it was JH from Surrey reporting on 14th March who wondered whether the tributaries would not warm up first and be the best place to start? There are always exceptions, but my own experience is the opposite: that we usually find the main stems come on to fish first first, the Usk tending to be a little in advance of the Wye, then the upper rivers and medium size tributaries, and finally the brooks, the high altitude ones being last of all to warm up. But, as I have already said, this cold spring is an exceptionally tough one. Don't worry; warm weather will get here sooner or later.

5 Trout

1 Trout

We were washed off so no report. We fished Red Lion, but saw nothing and had no pulls. Water dirty and rising.

Used 'Klink and Dink' method.
Hard going, nothing rising despite a hatch.
The river was quite high and pushing through pretty hard so caution was required wading.
I tried all points along the beat, and varied the length to my nympth, as well as trying different nympths.
Still turned out to be a wonderful day - don't begrudge a penny!

2 Trout, 1 Grayling

Brrrrrr... Brisk... No fish caught, fished dry in obvious hodling lies with false hopes of a rise!
Nil fish.

Snow on the hills!!
3 trout, 2 of 10", 1 of 12" (a hen) - 2 to the nymph and one on dry
No consistant hatch. Very sparse flutterings of olives, small dark/large dark but very sparse. Stoneflies also making appearance (February Reds). Very chilly.

3 Trout

Conditions weren't ideal, extreme winds from around 12.30 made the fishing go off after a very short and prolific ldo hatch in which 1 decent brown of around 1.5lb was caught (plenty rising) and safely released. Did notice the fish had some sort of injury to the head. 1 other fish missed and another lost to a heavy leaded nymph, all before 12.30/1. Nice beat, shame about the weather. I'm sure in other conditions it would have been an excellent days fishing.

1 Trout

1 small sea trout, released.

1 Other

River on the rise and starting to colour up. Saw a couple of fish move but no takers!

Made a last minutes decision to fish as thought there might be small window before the rain coloured the river and brought it up. I was rewarded with a lovely mornings fishing in pleasant weather and a 10lb salmon from the Corner Tree pool. Was going to start at the top of the Vanstone but something told me I should cover the area around and downstream of the old broken croy in the Corner Tree. Fish was taken on a size 5 Monkey double and a heavy sinking (T10) tip on a slow sinking shooting head. No other fish seen or touched. Fished down through the Vanstone thoroughly by which time it was 14.00ish and the weather was really deteriorating. Time to head home.

1 Salmon