Feedback & Reports

Lovely stretch that I didn't do justice. Ended with bits and a couple of decent chub while Andy had 4 barbel.

Cefn Rhosan Fawr, what a stunning place to fish.If there is a more beautiful place to fish on a sunny day, I have yet to see it. Chose salmon ticket but only caught brown trout, released back into the red hued water of river. A mink was seen with a trout in its mouth, and some amazing underwater swimming by a merganser duck, I think. My only gripe about this beat is the poor access or lack of a path in the upper stretch, which simply runs out and you are forced to wade. I think this would be a bit of a problem if the river was higher. A truly great day out though, and I spent as much time taking photographs, as fishing. Stunning.

28 trout between 3 rods, largest 14 inches. The boys' weekend in what Ward once described as "The Great Desert of Central Wales" continued. Claerwen, also known as the "Wilderness Fishery," a very large lake and the wild trout preserve of the Elan valley complex, is extremely daunting - or at least I found it so - like a great inland sea surrounded by mountains. Downwind, waves break over jagged rocks. It's a good half hour on a rough track by 4WD to reach the top end, by which point you are almost over to Teifi Pools and Strata Florida. It's a very steep-sided dam, too steep to fish in many areas, and the big problem seemed to be locating the fish. Be prepared to walk miles along a rocky shore, casting as you go. The ones we did find (and my two friends already knew the water quite well) were in the rare side stream bays or around weed beds in the even rarer shallow places. The received wisdom is that the best way to fish it in a breeze (and there almost always is a breeze) is by pulling a team of Black and Peacock Spiders or similar fairly briskly on an intermediate line. Small black lures are also said to be good. Not my favourite way of fishing, but a couple of fruitless hours with a floating line and the fact that nothing could be seen rising convinced me that it was so, and I eventually contributed a modest 5 fish to the total with the intermediate line. Hard work, challenging fishing, but wonderful views and all the fresh air and sun anybody could want.

Web booking faultless - directions and beat description good. First time on the Wye, Foy is a nice short stretch with about six swims more available to wading. Caught 2 barbel and 5 chub lost about 8 fish to weed and hook pulls. DOH! Fishing tailed off in afternoon and evening as the sunny conditions made conditions difficult in shallow water. Bait used was pellet, sweetcorn, and meat. Overall good fishing nice scenery and would go back hopefully with more water on. Thaks WUF

First time fishing the Wye, arrived early with 2 friends and the river lookes great, level was normal and flow not too fast, it looked idyllic. We started fishing about 6.30 and had 3 chub and 2 barbel by 9.30 and we were looking forward to a nice day's fishing. But then the canoes arrived! I'm not against sharing the river with others, I have canoed the Wye with my children, and as an angler I was conscious of not causing inconvenience to other people. It's a pity that most of the canoeists didn't have the same consideration. A few were ok and went past quietly on the far side, but the vast majority who were in hire canoes (and there must have been 200 canoes go past) showed no consideration at all. We had to constantly ask them not to go over our visible lines, we had people crash into the bank beside us, we had 'flotillas' of idiots having water fights, messing about and even capsizing in our swim and this went on all day. We caught just 2 fish between 3 of us between 9.30am and 7.30pm after the last of the canoes had gone - I stayed on and had another chub and 2 barbel.

Fishing is a fickle sport at the best of times but to pay £15 for a ticket and then have your day ruined by people who show no common sense or courtesy is not acceptable - be warned!

My son, Alan, and I arrived at about 6am to find the river running quite high, and having never been there before we had difficulty in identifying fish holding areas. But thanks to Don Macer-Wright's arrival at about mid-morning and his valued guidance, we were able to see how and where to fish.
With many kayaks on the river we determined to return for an evening session.
Returning from Bristol at 6pm, we fished from 6.30 till 9.45pm. We chose to both fish at the lower end of the section, one rod each, using simple running legers and hair-rigged baits. With 16mm halbut pellets as bait, we caught Barbel from the very first cast.
In the three and a quarter hour session, Alan out-fished me with 5 Barbel ( best 7lb.4oz ) and 3 Chub to 4lb.1oz.
My catch was three Barbel of 7lb., 6lb.15oz., and 5lb.
Drove back to Alan's home in Bristol looking forward to the following day's evening session.

I really love this stretch of water and have fished it many times with lots of success. I have to say though that I was finally overcome by the state of the bank undergrowth to the extent that I only stayed for a couple of hours with a catch of just one brownie of about 11". Moving between my favourite stretches of water has become too much of a challenge. I will go back, but only when my options elsewhere are limited or in early season when the vegetation is not so dense. It would be great to see work done to improve access to this stretch of river so that it can be enjoyed to the full by all.

4 grayling from 1.25 to 2.5lb and 2 trout, 0.5 & 0.75lb.

Quite a slow day compared to previous experience on this stretch. 9 barbel, and 4 chub between us. A beautiful stretch but with relatively few places where you can access the river bank. The greasy banks meant that even some of those were unsafe to fish. I'm sure we will be back.

I checked the Upper Usk camera at 08:30 just before leaving and everything looked set for a reasonable days fishing. I got to the beat at 10:30 by which time the water resembled strawberry thickshake.

I flicked some nymph's for a couple of hours in the likely runs but with only 3-4" of visibility underwater it was always going to be tough.

No great surprise that the tally for the day was zero.