Feedback & Reports

13 x trout 6 - 15 inches. A very cold rainy morning with the wind blowing at times from just about every point of the compass, but mostly downstream, so I opted to fish spiders - Dark Snipe and Purple, Hare's Lug and Plover, Dark Moorgame.

Two brown trout of 1/4 pound each, caught on weighted nympths. Both returned in good condition. Hatch of Caddis around 1pm with some activity just below the surface, though nothing caught.

Fished wet flies down and across at sun down for about an hour, though nothing caught or seen. Camping at Penpont was very good and highly recommended for anyone looking to camp in the area.

6 Trout to 8", 2 x OOS Grayling to 14" all safely returned.
Hard going in a cold downstream wind most of the day, overcast but (thankfully) dry. Very nice beat with an excellent mix of water. Sparse and intermittent surface activity, probably many more fish available to nymphing (especially around the broken water through Cilau and above the spout) but I chose to stay with dries. Evening 'hatch' of sorts around 7-7.30 but nothing substantial and nothing took much notice of it. A few smallish Salmon leaping about in Armies pool and below the Backawy junction.

Extremely low river and spooky fish, with very challenging fishing as a result. Almost no flow in the glass smooth pools either! Four brown trout between 6" and 9" and one 8" grayling caught (all released). Successful patterns: #22 bead head PTN claimed 2 trout and the grayling (where the river was deep enough to fish a nymph) and #18 black klinkhammer and #10 silhouette mayfly pattern one trout each. Lost more fish than I landed too. Rain is desperately needed.

Eight trout, 9" - 13", all on dry fly.

A very similar day to to the 28th, Blustery with a few olives coming of but no mayflies to speak of. Again we caught around the same number of Grayling as Brown Trout, 12 or so of each all coming to a small F Fly.

Spent a pleasant couple of hours on this little brook, where agility and being of small stature are a great help. Lots of short runs and pools separated by fallen branches and debris. Had great fun, took 6 BT between 4"" and 6"" all on a Cahill. As the guide says mind the tree roots and some of the pools are deceptively deep. Quite a variety of fly life including some mayflies - certainly a place to come back to for a few hours.

Four 8" fish between us, all returned of course. Several sheep (between 4 and 6) were stuck on the river side of the fences at various points, and were thus scrabbling up and down the banks. Probably not ideal from an erosion/vegetation point of view ...

Low water levels meant a lot of walking between fishable water. We found walking back down the beat it was hard to know what to do. Walking on the edge of fields we often got stuck and had to retrace our steps due to uncrossable fences/vegetation, and at one point some grumpy git shouted at us that the fishing was private (we were walking downstream by the edge of the river). On the other hand when we walked in the river we came upon another party fishing up and felt bad we had disturbed their fishing. A few signs to make it easier to find a sensible route back down the beat would be helpful, but perhaps at odds with the wild feel.

Fished the afternoon to mid-evening. Following what has proved to be a very rare event so far this season, the river was up and coloured after Thursday's rain (but cleared somewhat after 6p.m. to permit some safer wading in the tail of the top section). Pretty windy, as usual this month, and not too much fly about apart from a few yellow mays throughout the afternoon and into the evening, although seemingly too few for fish to be interested in real or artificial YM emergers. Some E. danica mayfly from late afternoon, and more fly in the evening including what appeared to be some pale wateries/spurwings, and BWOS and sherry spinners - but fish showed little enthusiasm to rise - basically just a few oncers. Ten trout to 12 inches and five grayling to 13" taken on flashback HE nymph, super pupa, reed smut and a larger black F Fly. Oh and one shad of about 1.5lb on the nymph! Please Mr Weatherman, help the gardeners, farmers and fisherman and bring on some real rain ASAP and lots of it!