Feedback & Reports

Beautiful beat rained all day 1 hooked trout.

Warm and overcast with river slightly coloured but normal level. Expected a good day, turned out to be hard! Guided by Frank [Williams], we spent the morning french nymphing and picked up a couple of very good grayling and a small trout. Then nothing until late afternoon when there were some sporadic rises. Picked up 3 trout on a cdc & elk. Nice day, lovely piece of river but the water is still too cold for there to be a lot of action.

3 Trout (Small)
1 Grayling (Huge)

A strange day. 3 trout in the first half dozen casts on PTNs from the deep water above the weir ... and, not another touch until I picked up the Grayling just before lunch from one of the deeper runs towards the top of the beat. Nothing to follow. If I didn't know better, I would have said that, for the most part, I was fishing a stream devoid of fish. As I said, a strange day as Court of Noke has invaraibly produced plenty of fish for me in the past. Cold wind, clear river perhaps?

I said the Grayling was huge - it was. With no tape or scales, I could only guage it against the landing net rim. The fish was a good inch longer than the net - which is 19" long!

Reasonable conditions although a tricky wind at times. Sparse fly life and no rising fish. caught two Brown Trout of about 9ins and lost two others, one a much better fish, all on weighted nymphs in the faster, deeper runs.

Caught nothing. Saw one small trout rise all day despite apparently ideal conditions. A few fly but nothing to excite me or the trout. We did discover the Royal George at Lyonshall which was very pleasant and did a good lunch.

4 brown 12-14oz on dry fly (parachute). River low & clear. sunny day, only fished till 6pm looking forward to returning to fish a full day asap. All fish returned.

Strong downstream wind again but some fish rising in the more sheltered spots. Grannom hatching in good numbers all day. 3 other people fishing the beat with the permission of the estate including a relative of one of the staff. This made for some pressure on the productive/sheltered spots.
VC - 5 - most on nymph - PT and Hares Ear, GB 3 on dries - Klink and CDC shuttlecock.

Overall thoughts

We chose to fish dries most of the time but given the amount of G. hatching the numbers of fish rising were quite small. It clearly seemed that if one was after numbers of fish then nymphing would have been more productive. It was great to see such large hatches. A very pleasant 4 days but it is noticeable that the interruptions from walkers/stick throwers/picknickers seems to be increasing year on year. Also it is a touch galling to find other fishing fairly limited beats with the owners permission. We were not expecting that 5 anglers would be fishing the Glan Usk beat given the 'premium' price of £70 for 2 of us.

A very pleasant day. Cloudy/mild. Good hatch of pale ephemera at lunchtime and a few large dark olives. Missed two on olive klnkhammer. Cauught and returned 4 around 1/2 ponnd mark on beaded olive nymph. Thanks to wuf for a very nice day.

2 trout largest 10" 2 grayling largest 12".
Caught on tape wing caddis #14 and starling (starling replaced with CDC) and peacock goldhead nymph #14. All returned. Missed strikes far more than I caught and lost a few one of which that was quite a bit larger than the others. The one that got away :)

Grannom in large qtys present throughout the day, never noticed any other surface fly activity. However looking under stones there was great variety and qty of insect life, not skilfull enough to note exact species, also a couple of bullheads. So maybe a streamer pattern for the deeper pools next time.

Very nice beat, easily accesible, would visit again.

Another good, but hard day on the Usk this spring. Two of us fished Cilwych from 9.30am until 5pm. Milder than last week, which helped. A few Grannom in the air all day, but fish not really interested. Sparodic hatches of LDO all day which brought the occasonal fish up from the start, but a sustained hatch or rise did not develop at any stage. The blustery wind was a problem, and put down hatches as soon as they started. We managed 8 trout between us, betwen 11 and 18 inches. Seven of these were caught by targeting rising fish on dries, the other was caught by searching the water with nymphs. Nice beat, if you do not mind difficult wading and casting.