Feedback & Reports

Neither of us had visited the beat before and our first impressions were favourable – what a lovely spot. The river was at 10” and quite clear although there were lots of floating leaves about but otherwise a grey, windless cold day. In the morning we concentrated in the shallow gravelly glides and managed 5 fish between us – grayling to 1lb plus on small nymphs. After an early lunch we finally got some sun amongst broken cloud and the temperature rose noticeably and, so did the fish I am glad to say. Grayling were taking tiny midges/aphids with relish and we quickly managed another 20 or so fish – tiny GRHE. Unfortunately when the sun went down so did the fish and we reverted to nymph again to take a few more before a 5pm finish.
A lovely day in all and the rising fish really made it – there were lots of tiny flies – impossible to imitate – but the grayling were not too picky thankfully. We would heartily recommend this beat.

3 x grayling 11 - 14 inches. A hard, cold morning with the water full of leaves - a few on dries when an olive hatch began after lunch.

River condtions were very low and clear, with clear blue sky for most of the day. I caught many small grayling but foung it hard to locate the bigger fish. I had one fish of 11 inches and one of 14 inches on a small olive nymph. I also lost four reasonable sied grayling. A pleasant days fishing.

18 Grayling, 2 trout, all taken on small goldhead nymphs, all returned. Great days fishing. Many thanks.

Two barbel caught at the top of the beat around mid morning, one 5lb and the other 5lb 2ozs. Both caught on pellet. In the afternoon on the advice of Colin Richardson (the ghillie) we moved to the far end of the beat at the end of the island and had 3 chub - 3lb, 3lb 5ozs & 4lb 4ozs, all on pellet. The river was slightly up & the weather was overcast. We had a lovely day and we will come back for another go next year. Many thanks to Colin for pointing me in the right direction as he helped me catch my first ever barbel, may there be many more. Great service from the people at the Wye and Usk Foundation, I would recomend them to any angler.

8 grayling up to 2lbs. Rising well in one pool, most caught on small dry fly, a couple on small nymphs.

Got ten solid takes in the afternoon: lost two; returned six and kept two grayling. Also had a bite off a very juvenile Brown Trout who went back very quickly and unharmed.

The two grayling I kept were both around a foot long caught on a small pink shrimp.

16 x grayling 6 - 15 inches; 3 x out of season trout 6 - 12 inches. This beat was new to me and something of a grayling experiment as I have the impression people tend to associate it mainly with either salmon or coarse fishing. I rather liked it. Very different from just upstream, it's a massive, wide bit of river which has cut its way through quite a bit of farmland over recent years, leaving some wetlands and wilderness which the water birds like. As the passport states, it's easy wading on broad gravel flats, and in fact easily crossed with 1 foot on the Lanstephan gauge. I fished a team of wets at range as there is so much water to search and found the flats are absolutely stuffed with grayling parr - it's necessary therefore to find where the adults are holding up. It will be interesting to see how it fishes with the trotting rod later in the winter, when the grayling start to form tighter shoals.

Caught 2 grayling and 2 brown trout. Successful flies were snipe & purple & partridge & orange. All fish returned. Large groups of canoeists (school parties) were coming down the river all day long.

The beautiful weather and quality of fishing made for a really enjoyable 3 days. Thank you very much.

Eight grayling caught ranging from 5 inches to 11 inches (Bathing pool was the best 4 caught). Weather dry and bright, insect hatches still in abundance and trout still rising as well in Erwood pool. Possible salmon spotted at Top Planks and holding in pool just below the deepest pool there. Water low. All fish returned.