Feedback & Reports

Fished 2.00pm - 9.00pm, I had a terrible experience, my complaints are as follows:

Barbel: As a Great Ouse regular, I'm not used to starting at 2.00pm in clear water and catching a Barbel within 30 seconds of casting out. I was pouring a cup of tea when an 8-pounder tried to take my rod to Hereford. Fortunately I was only disturbed by four Barbel throughout the course of the evening.

Chub: They fight too hard. Twice I hooked large Barbel and emitted yelps of joy, only for the fish to miraculously turn into a three-pound Chub.

Salmon: I was just nodding off when a large Salmon crashed out of the river and woke me up. Please remove them from the river.

Canoes: I was lead to believe that I would be entertained by parties of canoeists capsizing, having water fights etc. Only four or five passed and all were disappointingly courteous.

Despite the above, and because I am a selfless individual, for the appropriate remuneration I would be happy to fish this beat on my own every day until the end of my life, just to ensure that no other angler is forced to suffer in the way that I was.

Beautiful beat in wonderfully peacful valley, not too marred by the lack of water. Heavy showers dampened what looked like a great afternoon at the outset. Temperatures dipped with the rain and the fish went quiet, but water temperature warm to the touch and as soon as the rain stopped they were back. Three WBT and Eight Grayling to about 15", all on dry fly with a crazy half hour's evening rise when the rain finally stopped.

Lost my favorite pair of Oakleys, so if anyone finds them will happily oblige with a bottle of their choosing!

Quiet start on pellets, changed to meat and caught 5-1/2lb barbel straight away. Four other good bites but didn't catch any more, left mid afternoon.

After heart stopping moments in the Heirag when a fish hit the spinner, only to see a very large chub come to the surface, to catching my first salmon in the Ferry Pool - a cock grilse of about 7lb, safely returned of course. Many thanks to all at the Wye and Usk for making this possible, what a fantastic days fishing.

No rise and very few flies on the water, but still managed to catch 8 fish between us including a 12" grayling and a 12" brown trout (stockie). This water always has something to offer and is amazing value.

Seventeen barbel and three chub caught throughout the afternoon with five fish lost. The river was very low and clear and access around the orchard had only two viable swims. With extra water these will not be fishable. Other fields are very open up and down stream but will not suit anglers not wishing to fish near to livestock. There are bulls in all meadows. Nice place though.

2 rods fished 4.30pm - dusk on Thursday 11th and all day Friday 12th, one a relatively experienced Barbel fisherman and the other hoping to catch his first Barbel. On Thursday we caught 17 Chub and 6 Barbel between us - naturally the biggest Barbel at 8:12 fell to the beginner! The fish went really mad for the last hour.

On Friday we caught 18 Chub and 8 Barbel between us - fishing was OK throughout the day, but oddly the river went completely dead from 7.00pm when the full moon rose above the horizon and we didn't get a bite after that point.

3 grilse seen below Chimes beat.
Nil return. Water v low, even after Thursday's torrential rain.

3 Brown Trout 10 " 11½" 12½". Lost 2 others which were also nice fish. All returned.

4 x trout 6-15 inches. This was a surprising day. It started quite dismally with a morning of heavy rain and plenty of wind as well. Why is it that the wind is always, always downstream? And it was cold. "It's hard land up here," said the farmer, and he was right. If you try the Crai in early season it feels as cold as upper Teesdale, which is saying something. (Note to self to pick a day of nice weather next time I fish in the Crai valley). Knowing that a lot of work has gone in to trying to improve this important spawning tributary, I was interested to know what the result would be. I'm aware of at least one party which had a good day here this sring. There seemed to be a reasonable amount of invertebrate life on the river bed. By midday I was rather disappointed with my result, however, what with struggling against the wind, missing small fish and so on. Apart from lots of parr and undersized fish, I had just three 6 inch trout to show for all the work. I was just trying to compose this report in my head when the wind dropped, the sun came out briefly and...out of the blue as it were...a proper trout came up from the depths and went down with the Klinkhammer firmly in its mouth. When the fuss was over it went just over 15.5 inches and I'll send the photo in to the WUF when I unload the camera. Admittedly it had that slightly wolfish, lean-jawed look of the cannibal to it, but at least it took a dry fly!