Feedback & Reports

Return to the lovely Escley Brook to try and break my duck on there. Stream low and clear. Few fish showing in the first pool at the start of the beat, but ultra spooky. Or is it my incompetence? I suspect the latter.

Fished right to the top of the beat, only a few pools fishable, some others nigh on impossible to get at.
Did find one fish showing in a pool, but had to resort to bow and arrow cast whilst lying on my stomach.
"I'm getting too old for this............" As Danny Glover once said. Top end of the beat is mainly bedrock, with the odd small pool. May fish better with a little bit more water. Bottom end is more stones with pools of quite deep sediment. Approach to the deeper pools is very difficult. Beat is in dire need of a haircut. As are the majority of the wild stream beats.

Off to the Dorset Stour next week. Hopefully chasing some quality roach. Back in Herefordshire next week, Abbey Dore/Chanstone Court calling.

New beat for me. Arrived to find it coloured after previous days rain, with about a foot in visibility. Few fish showing in the pool immediately above the low point weir. Hooked a decent fish on a para adams, but it jumped and left the fly in an overhanging branch. Bounced out of another in a small run of faster water.

Only fished up to the first footbridge, as it was getting a bit warm. Beat is generally in need of a trim, like most of the wild streams have been for a while. There was also signs of someone else having been around, with a few footprints in places that only a fisherman would be.

Caught 1 small 4” trout on a nymph and had a few bites from a deeper pool about 1/2 way up the beat, the water was muddied slightly here from cattle drinking at the top of the beat. Warm day. Difficult casting with trees overhanging all the way up. I only fished for a couple of hours from midday so wasn’t really expecting to catch.

1 Trout

I fished the Dore and the Escley in one day. It was lovely to be out with the fly rod but fishing conditions were, hot weather, low water, consequently no fish. A great pleasure to be out, all the same.

Arrived with the rain which is badly needed. Water still very low, but reasonable flow with a tinge of colour after heavy showers. It felt a considerable accomplishment just to get from the bottom to the top of this beat. Some inviting pools all the way up, mostly well guarded with overhanging foliage preventing casting from any distance. Virtually no surface activity, so fished mostly with tiny copper bead nymph that accounted for one beautifully marked 12 " trout and one parr. Several fly pasts by a kingfisher through the tunnel of trees. The last catch return for this beat dates from June 2019, though it is evident from bankside foliage that there has been recent access to the better pools.

2 Trout

2 x trout 7/8 inches, Duck's Dun. I found this pretty irritating. Has this beat really been adopted, because I see no signs of any trimming maintenance having been carried out in recent years? I found just two or three clear places in the lower part to flick a short cast and managed to get a couple of small trout out of a run. Everywhere else was solidly overgrown, from one side to the other. In fact I suspect I was one of the team which cleared it last, which was either in 2014 or 2015. We had it in quite good order then - and it's a good little stream with plenty of trout. Now the branches meet just above the surface practically all the way up. I didn't bother struggling up the upper part of the channel, but I walked the field above looking down and it was completely overgrown. Maintenance needs to be done if this is to be offered on the Wild Streams scheme.

WUF Note : Thanks for this feedback, we will be looking into the maintenance issues.

2 Trout

Bowled up at the lovely Escley Brook pretty early , to avoid the overhead sun as much as possible , so must have been about half eight buy the time I was casting my first fly , or there about . . . .

Usual rig , and opted for small Parachute Adams for starters , as I did see a rise , very splashy and excitable about twenty yards up from the beat start . . . Anyway , after about half hour , had first nice confident rise to the Adams , nice little Escley fish , of about seven inches , and slipped back in . . . .

Was a while before any more interest , and I changed the fly a few times , next take was in fact on a black Klinkhammer , again small fish head of small pool , lovely markings , and slipped back in . . . .

Sun was climbing high by ten , and very warm too , lovely to see such activity in the little Brook , loads of caddis on the bedrock , and great to watch them covertly moving about !!!!!! Also lots of Brook dun larva too , nice too see . . . .

The ravens were getting frisky up above , and playing hard to get , as were the trout , as soon as that sun got high in the sky , action ceased , I'm sure even an Houston earlier would have been better , and I'm plumbing on it livening up tonight here , probably about half seven eighthish . . . . I noticed an angler is booked in here for tomorrow , my tactical advice is get here early bells , fish it up the pools till you get to the skinny water , and call it a day at nineish , and return seven in the evening , if at all feasible . . . .

It's a great little spot , could have done with a tad more water in it I guess , real wild stream stuff and rocky and varied , reminds me of some of the streams North of Rhayader , spot on . . . A fun three hours, I'm sure sport would have been better had the sun not showed up , but hey that's fishing hey , and two pretty brownies from a beutiful stream isn't a bad start to the weekend . . . Happy days !!!!!

2 Trout

1 trout 10 ins caught on pt nymph.

1 Trout

Great beat, caught one and had three takes which managed to wriggle off my barbless fly.

1 Trout

Fine day between the showers. Sheltered from wind. No takes on nymph. March brown and occasional danica hatching. 8 fish not taken to net - "distance release" by shaking the hook - but one that did was surprising for this little upland stream. 1wbt ~13"

1 Trout