Feedback & Reports

Had another good day fishing today. Well, a brilliant day in fact. Fished Gromain all day from 9.30am, had couple of knocks through the afternoon then returned to the Willow Pool to have my last half hour fishing at 3.30pm. After about 10 casts I caught a hen salmon of 15.5lbs, my biggest ever salmon caught on a size 10 Black Salar Piglet fly which took me around 15 to 20 mins to land. This fish was fresh been in the river couple of weeks maybe. Absolutely mint condtion lovely fish and gave a brilliant fight. The fish recovered very quickly and gave a good strong swim back to the river.

12 x trout 6-15 inches. I can't complain about the weather, which was mainly warm and dull, but it was a slow day as far as rising trout were concerned - very little activity. I therefore fished a team of spiders through the fast water at the heads of pools to get these.

A warm day with a downstream cross breeze. A few olives duns in the air and spinners too but very little in the way of fish rising. A challenging day but we managed to winkle out 8 browns to 1.25 lbs, 6 on gold head nymphs and 2 on dries. Unfortunately another 2 fishermen turned up at Midday having booked via the landowner. We have had increasing challenges of this nature on recent visits, coming across people who 'have the owners permission to fish whenever I like', people spinning, and folk who just think they can fish without a permit. In my view this stretch can not usually support 4 anglers and is a challenging but sometimes rewarding beat which requires subtlety and delicacy of approach to get the best out of it.
Whilst it states on the website that the landowner can allocate 2 rods this is not made clear in the Passport Booklet. It is on other beats which have the same issue.
The bottom field on one side is a caravan/campsite and now it looks like the other side is being used as a campsite as well with barrels put down for log fires. In amongst the debris there I found long lengths of monofilament - not flyfishing leader. Also a digger has been used in the river bed at one point leaving a big hole in the gravel and thoroughly wrecking what was one of the best dry fly stretches on the beat. It looks like gravel abstraction to me - is this allowed ? It seems at odds with the Wye Usk stream enhancement programme. In effect the bottom 400 yards at Penpont now has so much alternative activity it is close to a write off for fishing purposes. Today one of us encountered a stick throwing, dog swimming family in this stretch too.

WUF note - The gravel removal was nothing to do with WUF but we have reported the incident.

A nice bit of water & several nice fish caught between both rods. One small complaint though - this is a four rod beat and on top of our two rods we saw another three anglers out spinning for salmon on the same beat as well?

WUF note - It is very important you phone this information in on the day so we can act on it immediately.

Over priced and the lower part of the beat is not good wading, nil fish seen, nil fish caught.

Lovely day on a very picturesque beat, river was slightly coloured but not very high. Caught 3 trout around 9 inches on a Greenwells Glory and missed about 10 takes.

6 grayling caught between 1lb and 2lb each. 3 caught on dry fly and three on Czech nymph. All released.

Classic estate lake fishing. Very shallow in the margins, maximum depth we found was under the Oaks but didn't plumb the far side so may be deeper holes. Carp there in numbers, hooked 3 margin fishing, landed one beautiful mirror of 15lbs, lost the other 2 in 10inches of water as they bolted at close range. Numerous Roach, Rudd, Chub, Perch and Eels later in the day when the carp had retreated under the trees. Had hoped to surface fish but a strong wind blew directly up the lake and made presentation impossible.
60 percent of bank not accessible so when carp followed the wind made it impossible to reach them as I was only float fishing.
Another great venue, didn't see another soul all day, will be back to try again.
Thanks to WUF for making these great venues available.

Perfect conditions only fished 09:00 to 16:00, two barbel both around 8lb taken on pellet.

Sunny and warm, river slightly coloured but not high. Yes the beat is 1.5 miles long but note the description of this beat states that 'access in and out of the river is tricky in the wooded areas'. An understatement! We found that accessing the entire beat was impossible and couldnt find a way through the 'jungle' in either the upper or lower woods and couldn't get to the lower weir which was disappointing. However, there were still plenty of nice runs and open areas to fish. There wasn't a great deal showing but we managed 2 small grayling in the day and 3 browns to around 1lb at the death on small tups and tung head nymphs.