Feedback & Reports

There were a few fish in the beat but Alas! none for me. A lovely beat in super surroundings I has a really enjoyable day.

River a few inches over summer level. Sunny day but strong cold wind. Plenty of flies in air and on water but few rises. Caught 4 trout up to 11in on dry fly.

4 Trout

I don't mean to abuse the catch return system but I thought other anglers, as they fish the Skenfrith beat of the Monnow, may appreciate some thoughts. We all have places where we learned to fish - a brook, a lake, a village pond. I was lucky enough to have this beat as my learning ground. My grandfather sub-let a day a week from about 1980 for 20 odd years, in addition to his salmon days on the Wye at Symonds Yat and Preston on Wye and he taught me to fish here. I clearly inherited the fishing genes from him as he was as obsessed as I was. There's a stretch of slower water more than half way down the beat, clear apart from reeds on one side, before you go through the woods. This was always my favourite spot. I can still remember him laying out a beautiful line with his cane rod to a rising fish during the mayfly. I also remember helping him over a stile, well into his eighties, when he turned to me sadly and admitted he was getting too old to go fishing any more. I remember most fish I caught here over 25 years. An early one, from the fast water in the top run after the bridge on a homemade worm fly, with the exhilarating flash of gold underwater and the glance behind me to my father. Or, the one on my own garish green creation, idly dibbled from a high flood-collapsed bank. The bottom run in front of the house was always a place where others seemed to catch fish but it was never somewhere I succeeded. I learned what craft I have on these waters and I still can walk every inch in my mind and I will until the day I die. I don't fish regularly here any more but will from time to time. When you fish from the beach, about a third of the way down, think of countless happy family picnics and where my own son caught his first trout. Its a very special place to me and I am thrilled that the WUF can make it available to so many others. PS - the fly that always did best for me (perhaps because it was the only one I could tie at the time and I was determined to use my own flies) was the Tups Indispensible. I'm never without one now....

0.15m on gauge and looking clear. Not much fly life and the swallows were scarce. Two caught as targeted rises and two in tail of pool with no prior indications which included an oos grayling. All took a Kites Imperial, but I suspect the Iron Blue will soon be out of the box.

3 Trout, 1 Grayling

Slow day with very little fly life of signs of fish moving. Both managed to rise a couple but nothing stuck.

Great days fishing at Goodrich. Finally some decent conditions. Big thanks to Mick Sutton for advice, expertise and help to land my first Salmon. 14lb cock fish from the doghole on a black/red flying C.

1 Salmon

FIRST SALMON ON THE FLY AFTER 12 YEARS!!!!
Caught on a conehead Sunray Shadow 3.15pm 29" long approx 9lbs fresh cock sea lice. River 2' 5". Netted by Nigel Hobbs.
(Many congratulations from WUF!)

1 Salmon

Lovely spring day on the Usk, fish rising between 11 and 12 but then a cold wind kept the hatch and the fish down. 2 wbt taken on dries. 1 sizeable fish also lost.

2 Trout

I caught these bottom fishing. It was a quiet days fishing. I also caught 2 stock fish which were too small which I released. One useful tip if the wind is coming from the north it doesn't seem to fish very well.

3 Trout

no fish caught...wet flies for three hours along roadside bank. Dead sheep at far end on the bank.