Latest News and Pictures 2024

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Newbridge on Wye  18 July 2024

River fairly high due to releases of cold water from the dams for maintenance work supressing fly life. The warm water from the Ithon helping aquatic activity so fish gathering at or below the confluence maintaining the success of this favourite fishing area. 

Geoff hit on the most successful method for the conditions and stuck to trotting a worm for most of the day. Trout, grayling and chub all falling victim to a luscious worm with the best being a lovely chub of three pound ten ounces. Other baits proved less popular as did legering. Interestingly he caught a couple of smallish chub under a pound and a half which had escaped being harvested by the Goosanders. Richard had one down the bottom of the beat of roughly similar size so perhaps Steve Grimwood's attempts at chasing the goosanders away is bearing fruit. 

The other Steve, Johnson, suffered physically and mentally as the tendonitis in his right shoulder prevented him from casting but not from yearning to cast.

Bob tried many of his favourite baits but eventually the luscious worm was the only successful offering.

The releases from the dams have fallen to normal summertime levels so perhaps if we have no heavy rain above the dams it will give me a chance to compete against those skilled with a worm on the next visit - or I will have to try my luck with the worm myself!  

Tenbury     13 July 2024        Competition

The graph of the river height at Tenbury had flat lined at low summer level so fine and far off was going to be the tactic for success. At noon on the day before the competition the river rose nine inches at Tenbury which meant it was brown and muddy and crying out for worms. But I didn't have time to get any. Geoff offered to give me some but I was too stubborn to accept help. 

I fished Peg 5 which wasn't quite high enough for the fish to come out of the main current onto the slabs so my bread and maggots were ignored. At lunchtime I moved  to Peg 3 which is a dream to run a maggot down but not on the 13th.

Geoff legered a worm and caught a cracking bream of 5lb from Peg 8. A great specimen for his first bream and I hope he gets plenty more in the future.

John caught a couple of eels and a fish that none of us had seen before - a chub/bream hybrid! It had the head of a chub with no sign of the downturned telescopic mouth of a bream but the body was deeper and narrower than a chub with grey fins and scales like a chub.. 

Why oh why didn't I take a photograph of it! I didn't think of that until the next morning. I really am getting past it.

Bob fancied Peg 1 but had no joy there so moved to the bottom of the beat with no change in fortune. Richard tried peg 11 all day but did no better.

It was a difficult day for those who had fished the beat before but for Geoff and Bob it was casting into a complete mystery with nothing to guide them. Let's hope we can have some better luck with the weather.

Newbridge on Wye   4 July 2024   Fly-fishing-only Competition

The authorities decided that they had run off sufficient water from the dams to do whatever they wanted to do and reduced the flow to normal summer flow. This should have helped the dry fly action but didn't seem to do so. Perhaps the insects whose presence is so necessary for dry fly sport had decided to wait and see if this was yet another false alarm or a more lasting period of calm before venturing out. A bit like putting the chair out onto the patio.

Steve who is desperately struggling with a bad shoulder induced by overdoing the strimming work on the river banks managed to cast left handed and catch two good grayling and a trout. He was using a gold head nymph as there was nothing rising. He showed Richard what he was doing and, monkey see monkey do, imitation is the purest form of flattery etc., etc., Richard almost beat him at his own game. On went a gold head and out came one trout and two fine grayling failing to catch his mentor by two  ounces. I'm sorry to inform my gentle reader that the book has been closed and I am no longer taking any bets on what method Richard will be using at the next visit to Newbridge.

Geoff pottered about with a dry fly and surprised two beautiful brownies over a pound on the stretch opposite and below where the Ithon joins the river. His knee operation was a great success and he navigates the bank well but reckons that when the other knee is done he will be galloping  about like a two year old - horse that is not a human!

Peter Watts had not fly fished before but managed to catch a very nice grayling near the end of a arm tiring day. When I find out what he caught it on I will amend the text accordingly but whatever it was it was triumph of perseverance.

Roger was awaiting a cataract op. and was having great difficulty tying a fly onto the leader so we will excuse his lack of success.  

I climbed to the top of the podium, creaking more than I used to, on the backs of several strokes of luck. The second fish I hooked made my three fly leader look like a ladies crochet exercise (in the beginner's class) necessitating a complete rebuild. Deteriorating eyesight and dexterity meant a half hour adjournment before I was back inaction only to find that the returned fish had excited some others and I landed anther good grayling. After lunch I fished the bottom pool which has been good to me in the past and landed a surprise chub. No one can claim that catching a chub on a weighted fly is anything more than a stroke of luck. On my way back to the car I dropped in at the head of the Aber Pool (the long pool leading down to the junction with the Ithon and down to the head of Cornwall). There is a fast current there with some small bays in the rock wall which sometimes hold a grayling so I let my weighted nymph roll into them - no nothing - but then when I lifted the fly out I was met with a solid weight which proved to be a one and a half pound grayling. The total weight of my three lucky fish was six pounds six ounces which was more than half of my grand total. With luck like that you do not need skill.

Many years ago I was lucky enough to see some grayling in one of those bays. It was in mid afternoon with low clear water and the sun was behind me blinding the fish The bays have a smooth sandy floor and it was like seeing fish in an aquarium about three feet deep. Someone had thrown some sweetcorn in and the fish were swimming round picking up the grains - but they simply dropped them again. After about 15 minutes I realised that all the grains were completely ripe and sealed off at the end which attaches them to the cob.  Grayling do not have pharyngeal teeth like a chub which can pulp a ripe grain in seconds so presumably the ripe grains are indigestible to the grayling. Lesson learned - when I fish with sweetcorn for grayling I always use open ended grains on the hook.

29 June 2024   Newmill Bridge      Competition

The water was low but carried a greyish cloud which Rob Brookes claimed had unusually persisted since the last high water. It reminded me of the colour of the Ithon produced by the grey clay of that river's catchment. Some of the tributaries of the Teme share a common watershed with the Ithon across the Radnor Forest so perhaps the the idea is not completely unfounded. Why the colour has persisted for so long is a mystery - the Ithon has completely cleared for weeks.

Rob Brookes grabbed the favoured low water swim. Peg 1 and made the most of it catching small chub and dace on float fished maggots then Bang!!   he hooked a much larger fish. Bob is too experienced an angler for the dreams of a big barbel or monster chub to persist for long  for although the fish was very powerful it didn't have the weight for one of those. It turned out to be a lovely large brown trout which eventually came to the net and was safely released. Unfortunately for Bob it was ineligible to feature in his catch, as would also have been salmon, sea-trout, lampreys and bleak under the rules of the competition.

Geoff started well with a couple of small chub but then struggled to catch three more fishing the Pike Hole. This is one of those pegs which flatters to deceive. It looks really good but when you fish it you discover that there does not seem to be anywhere where the current does not swirl around.

Steve was very badly hampered by his bad shoulder which is a result of doing too much work with a strimmer cutting back the vegetation so that we could all enjoy our fishing. He needs months of physio to put it right.

I was badly hampered by overhanging branches which were the result of my own ineptitude. It was my job to cut off the over hanging branches and I missed two. Talk about ineptitude!!  I should never have landed the first small chub. When I tried to bring it in I discovered the over hanging branch and when I untangled it I found that the chub had become entangled in some weeds at the edge of the water and when I pulled it out from there the rod became entangled in the over hanging  branch......... Oh dear. When the red mist cleared a little I took off the bottom section of the rod, untangled the rod tip from the over hanging branch, pulled the chub out from the weed again and safely netted it. Who said that barbless hooks fall out! The words of a friend from my student days echoed through my head in his wonderful Barnsley accent "Burt, if you fell down a pitshaft you'd come up selling matches".

20 June 2024  Newbridge on Wye     Outing

The weather forecast was ideal but I had misgivings regarding the large amount of water being released from the Elan Valley dams. As it turned out it appeared to aid coarse tactics, reduce the effectiveness of the fly (Wet and Dry) and render the sunk nymph useless. I stubbornly fished the sunk nymph nearly all day.

Geoff had his big trout on a worm and his big chub on the old classic cheese paste while Dave was catching big grayling on a trotted worm. In the extra water the grayling really put a bend in the rod.

Steve Johnson as a result of all the strimming he has done has a poorly shoulder so could not fly fish but managed two nice grayling on worm. His son Kevin had a stack of small trout and grayling on the wet.

Peter Watts without Bob Griffiths on hand to spur him on slipped off the podium and had to be happy with some small trout while Richard couldn't get amongst them either and had to be content to weigh in a small trout.

When I fell in at the top pool I lost my olive coloured  Hardy cap and to celebrate I have ordered a new Hardy cap in a different colour. I feel sure that the most observant among you will notice the difference in shade at the next meeting!

5 June 2024   General update

Steve Johnson has been putting in a lot of work with his strimmer at our three river venues and on one occasion strimmed all the way from Peg1 to Peg 12 at Tenbury. He's done the car park at Newmill several times and also the access to the swims at Tenbury, Newmill and Ham Bridge. It is amazing how quickly the vegetation grows down the Teme valley at this time of the year and how it can completely cut off all sight of the river. 

I joined him on a couple of occasions and we logged and burned the trees that had been cut down around the car park at Newmill. We surmised that they had been cut down by the organisation that had erected a broadband relay transmitter there some years ago.

My concerns regarding the Wye at Newbridge were allayed considerably yesterday when I caught some trout and grayling at Builth on both dry and wet fly and lost a near two pound grayling as well. A thunderstorm some mile upstream of where the Ithon enters the Wye where we fish below Brynwern Bridge had caused a landslide which dumped a load of lovely Ithon grey clay into the river course. It ran like cement for a couple of weeks but has now almost completely settled thank goodness so all looks well for our visit there on the 20th. 

11 May 2024   Wicken's Pool    Contest

Sorry for the delay in entering this report - computer problems!

Glorious Summer day with carp spawning furiously round the island and roach in the margins which left the perch as perhaps the only fish in the pool not preoccupied with procreation. Perhaps that line of reasoning fell at the first fence as no perch over five inches were netted.

After an hour I had only caught 2 small perch and one small roach using liquidised bread and micropellets as attractant and and maggot as the hookbait  while Richard fishing the next peg had caught a carp. I walked round the lake mulling over the idea of setting up a rod (I was using a whip with a light elastic) but no-one had caught more than three small fish so I decided to to stick with the original plan. I was extremely lucky that when I hooked a carp it was obviously weary from the task of spawning and my two and a half pound hooklength stood up to the task of landing all 3lb 8oz of it.

They say that it is better to be lucky than lovely and I'm living proof of that as Richard lost a second carp on sweetcorn and Ian didn't get an extra carp to add to the two he landed. I'm sure that the fish spawning around Dave didn't help his cause nor Shirley's bad hand didn't help him. 

It will all be different next time.

9 April 2024 Wicken's Pool

Putting up an emergency notice with Ian Wilson. Appropriate to my position as Executive Chairman of this august body I watched Ian dig a hole and then held the post while Ian bashed it with a sledge hammer. Made sure that the post did not intrude into the line of the mowing machine so as not to incur the wrath Shirley. Job well done!  My grateful thanks to Ian for providing the sledge hammer and even more grateful thanks for wielding it

Light bank clearing

1st & 2nd April with Steve Johnson at Ham Bridge and Newmill Bridge. Trying to clear access to the swims during the Spring growth spurt. 

7th April with Vincent Brian at Tenbury. Steve had been been there fairly recently with his trusty strimmer so we cut off some branches and removed a sunken branch from Peg 6

20 April 2024 Wicken's Pool Silver fish Contest.

One of those early Spring days where if you were in the sun and out of the wind your stripped off all your woolies but conversely in the breeze and out of the sun you were frozen stiff. Still without my glasses following my cataract operation my wife magnanimously ferried me to Wickens and dumped me there while she went off shopping and visiting relatives.

The fish fed fairly well before midday but the afternoon was a struggle. I used liquidised bread and a few maggots to attract the fish with maggot as hookbait. I tried bread punch but having to use a large float because of my compromised eyesight the shy-biting fish simply ate the bread and thanked me with a bare hook. A five metre elasticated whip with orange Hydrolastic, 2.5lb Supplex hooklength and a size 18 hook completed the outfit. Attention to the hook is vital when Perch are being caught as their bony mouths can ruin a hook in seconds. When the hook is new it will slide into a maggot without any problem but after a time catching perch you will be struggling to hook the maggots cleanly and struggling to keep a perch from falling off - time to change the hook.

John Stevens whose winning 6 1/2lb catch was boosted by a lovely perch of 1lb 11oz rang the changes of bait between red and white maggots, dead red maggots and pinkies. They all seemed about equally effective.

6 April 2024   Wickens' Pool   Contest

A very coloured and  very windy Wickens' Pool welcomed the contestants when driving up the track with all your gear was but a faded memory.

Everyone caught fish but inevitably some more than others. I wasn't there to record the event so cannot record if Shirley's one ounce consisted of more than one fish or more than one species but it was more than the total catch of one contest there last year so is not to be sneezed at.

Kevin had two good carp in his catch with one being a beauty of 5lb 9oz. and Ian caught the only other carp to gain second place. Richard acted on his observation at the previous contest - "I should have brought some maggots" - by edging out Steve and gaining third by 2oz.

Congratulations to everyone for catching in such difficult conditions. I have recovered from my cataract operation and hoping to have new glasses so that I can fish the next contest on the 20th of this month revisiting Wickens'. This is an innovation for us being a silver fish-only competition. 

Don't write off carp fishing on that day if that is your preference because although carp do not count towards the catch for the competition on that day any large specimens will be weighed and considered for the President's Shield competition. This is awarded for the largest fish caught in a competition during the season. This was won last year by John Stevens with a 6lb carp caught on the 22nd of April - one of ten he caught on that day at Wickens'

16 March 2024  Wickens' Pool Contest

Bright start then overcast; light rain before midday, heavy rain late afternoon. The water was very coloured due to recent rain. John Stevens led the way with three carp (9-11-00) followed by Kevin Johnson with 2 carp plus some silver fish for 6-10-00.

Ian Wilson had a carp and some silver fish for 2-11-00 closely followed Dave Evason with 2-05-00 who missed out on the carp. 

Steve Johnson and Shirley Allington also missed out on the carp registering 10 oz and 4 oz respectively. 

Richard Stowe missed out on the carp and the silver fish - is reported to have said "I should have brought some maggots".

Report compiled by Lance Burton from information supplied by Richard Stowe.