2018         NEWS AND PICTURES 

19 October

   Peter Mountford sent me this photo of him cradling an 8 lb 14 oz barbel he caught at Newmill bridge a couple of days ago. Legered luncheon meat caused its downfall

Newbridge on Wye    4 October 2018

     Dave Evason showed the way  using  maggots to catch the grayling then in the afternoon he had a go with sweetcorn just below the Ithon and caught a couple of nice Chub.

     Richard and Roger showed me how to catch them on a fly while my weighted nymph approach was viewed with disdain by the grayling. Richard

Junior Competition  Wickens Pool  16 September 2018

     Four teams took part this year but the frequently successful team of Connor  and Dave Hemming were blown out of the water by Tarlia and Ian Wilson. Everyone caught fish but Tarlia herself caught almost as much as the other three teams combined so with Ian chipping in over 6 pounds victory was assured. Adam and Rosie have some very accomplished tutors and will soon be posing a threat for the opposition while Connor will be shuffling off on his Zimmer frame.

     The photos show how much the youngsters enjoy themselves and how much Shirley's mowing adds to our enjoyment.

     Many thanks to all who helped make it such a success.

Wickens Pool  29 September 2018

    Some people like to handicap themselves so Peter fished bread punch for roach - and had a cracking bag of them - and he still beat me!  I had a cunning plan (of course); attract the carp with maggots and groundbait and fish with small cubes of luncheon meat to avoid the roach hordes. It worked like a dream in the last tem minutes when the carp decided to eat the luncheon meat !  Before that I had to resort to Plan B which was to fish with a heavy float with all the shot bunched near to the bait so that the maggot bait would dive down through the  horde - but usually the roach were too quick and caught the bait.

    Ian caught his on a pellet feeder while Dave (Evason) took to the shadows and pole fished small pieces of sweetcorn a few inches from the side. It was a glorious sunny Autumn day but with a keen breeze and Dave emerged blinking  in the early afternoon sun frozen stiff to find us baking in the sunshine.

Newbridge 20 September 2018

  The forecast was for very heavy rain and indeed it was. In Llandrindod I emptied out one inch of rain by lunchtime and another inch the next morning. It seemed to miss (to some extent) the upper Wye but the Irfon which comes in at Builth reached the highest level recorded for some years.

Newbridge on Wye     6 September 2018 

    Definite hint of Autumn in the air. Hint of melancholy as we discussed the recent demise of George Tolliday who loved fishing so much and particularly dry fly fishing at Newbridge. Melancholy soon dispersed as we recalled his Black Country humour and the hilarious sweeping generalisations of a profound curmudgeon - cricket players, politicians, rugby players ...  all a load of puffters!

    We welcomed Darren Bore who had visited here last year and had done so well fishing Klink and dink for the grayling. He soon showed that it was by no means a flash in the pan as he repeated the performance on the shoal of grayling in the Aber Pool.

     Roger's introduction to light line fishing (3 weight rod and line and 1.8lb leader) came to an abrupt end when a near one pound Brown Trout obediently obeyed the pull of the line and came to our feet but then changed its mind. When you see a fish decide that it is going to rocket off to distant parts there isn't much time to explain that unless some line is released and the fish allowed to run off for a distance, the molecular forces maintaining the integrity of the copolymer forming the leader will be overwhelmed by the resultant stresses imposed upon it and it will break. So my shout of "Let it go! Let it go!" was met by incomprehension and a broken leader. Still, it was all my fault as Roger explained that I had set him up for a fall by providing him with a leader of near zero breaking strain. So that was alright then. We then put a similar fly onto his set up and were pleased to discover that the sucees dwelt in the pattern and not the fineness of the leader.

    Another very enjoyable day by the river and the threatened rain held off.

Wicken's Pool  1 September 2018  (Re-located from Ham Bridge)

  Lovely late Summer's day brought the carp out to play again and everyone caught fish. Shirley showed what he could do (I think he has been holding back for bets but eventually realised that no-one was going to start betting so decided to get on with the fishing!).

  I messed about for ages before starting to fish and first drop in hooked a carp - my lucky day - then when it came in close it went round a snag and the hook came out and the rig went deep into the overhanging tree. A knight in shining armour came to my rescue and felled half the tree and my rig was rescued - many thanks Ian.

  To my dismay Peter turned up a little late so I knew I had slipped one further down but amazingly after a couple of hours he hadn't caught anything! - my lucky day - but a big gust blew some leaves off the tree and snagged his line so he moved round the corner (and won the competition!).

   Then with two hours to go Tony Q turned up so I was going to slip another place down the rankings - but he hadn't brought any bait with him!  He had only come for a chat - this is my lucky day - then Shirley gave him some bait !!

   How could I possibly swing things my way. I need a guardian angel - and he promptly appears in his shorts bearing the glad tidings that there is to be a party this evening at Wicken's farm at 7 o'clock with a gazillion cars parked blocking everything. I blessed my guardian angel, who was disguised as Shirley, quickly conferred with Richard who was fishing nearby and passed on the edict that the competition would end at five o'clock prompt. The guardian angel stomped off and proclaimed in a loud voice that  "Lance says that we have to finish at five o'clock".

    Seriously though  my thanks go to Tony (for I think that is how we learned about the party) for saving the day from a sour ending by avoiding the Izaak Walton getting all mixed up in the traffic.

    Our thanks again to Shirley for mowing the grass so neatly that it prompted the farmer to cut the grass where we park the cars, and my congratulations to Ian and Peter for showing the true potential of the fishing.

Newbridge   23 August 2018

Overnight rain had raised the water level a couple of inches just right for upstream nymph - WRONG AGAIN!!  Roger fished down and across with a tiny pink nymph and filled his boots (figuratively). T

Wickens Pool  18 August  2018

       Forecast a warm day with little sun but a stiff breeze which turned out about right.  Everyone said how low it was "Just look at the overflow. I've never seen it so low" and similar rubbish so I set up a light rig for fishing under the bush. When I came to plumb the depth I found that the stem of the float was practically touching the bottom - do you know I've never seen it so low!!

       Four pole sections out from the dam found me plenty of water and plenty of fish - about 3 inches long!   Eventually I found that by adding water to the groundbait and making it like putty I could pot in balls of groundbait containing maggots to carry the maggots to the bottom where the carp frightened away the little roach. By putting all the shot down to the top of the hooklength I could usually get passed the roach to the carp. Then every time I caught a carp it frightened the others away so I had to put some more groundbait in - repeat ad nauseam.  I was worn out by the final whistle.

       Next time I will use 4mm pellets for feed and bait to see if I can beat the tiny roach and use a heavier rig so that the bait will shoot down past the tinies. When I work out why it doesn't work I will let you know.

       When I got home my wife wouldn't believe I had been to Wicken Pool - the sole of my boots were as clean as a cat. This was due to the continuing hard work of Shirley with the mower and the civil engineering skills of Shirley("If it civil it's nothing to do with me") and Ian bridging the boggy bits with paving slabs. Many thanks to Shirley and Ian - we do appreciate your hard work. 

Newbridge  9 August 2018

       A cooler day than of late but plenty of sunshine to make it very pleasant. Not much fly-life, as was to be expected under the conditions, so dry fly was a bit of a struggle. Richard fished his fly half sunk and Roger pinched a couple of my lightly weight nymphs to combat the conditions. Peter showed his versatility by catching a chub on bread, grayling on worm and grayling on fly. I think he could have caught a barrow-load of grayling on the worm if he had wanted to but was amusing himself by trying everything. Everyone caught fish and it was a very enjoyable day.

Newbridge  26 July 2018

      Forecast to be very hot and it was but there was a bit of overcast from time to time so it was very pleasant. Fished Grimwood's pool for half an hour before deciding that it had been fished hard by a flock of goosanders and a family of otters in addition to a visit from that bloke who randomly throws pots of cyanide into the river. Walked downstream and met Richard walking up (to get his coarse fishing gear). He had been hurling a dry fly at some grayling which had sometimes risen halfway up to look at the fly before slowly swimming away in disgust.

      The White Knight rode to the rescue and I gave him a fly to try while I went back to the car for some finer leader material. When I came back he was just landing a grayling having already caught a small trout so I left him to it. He caught all his fish on that poor overworked size 20 - ahhhh.

      Later in the afternoon I went down to see how Dave was going on at Upper Hoyval. He had about fished it out so left me to it. He had been plagued by fish coming off the hook which so often happens when conditions mean that they are a bit half-hearted at taking the bait. I fished it down with a Czech nymph and caught a few but lost several more so I fished it back up with lighter nymphs and caught quite a few without losing more than a couple. Fishing upstream normally results in a better hookhold as you are pulling the hook into the fishes mouth rather than out of it.

      The results of course only include fish over 10 inches and we all caught quite a number of fish under that size to keep us interested. Dave was trotting small worms while the rest of us stuck to flies presented in many ways.

      A thoroughly enjoyable day and I learned a lot. I find it fascinating that having fished for grayling and having caught hundreds and hundreds of them over the last 60 years or so I still keep finding out more all the time - perhaps I'm a slow learner!

Click to enlarge the image

Newbridge on Wye  Fly-only Competition.   5 July 2018

     There are times when we curse the cold water released from the Elan Valley Dams complex but under the heatwave conditions we are experiencing we must regard them as a blessing. The Wye not only has a guaranteed minimum compensation flow from the dams but also acts as a conduit for water released from the dams which is pumped out near Monmouth to supply part of South Wales.

      The river was a nice height but fly life was at a minimum so dry fly fishing was a lesson in frustration. Our guest Simon Barker, although experienced in still water fly fishing, had never fished a wild river before. Fortunately Richard still carries his thigh waders with him, which he has abandoned wearing once he took to wearing chest waders, so saved the day by lending them to Simon. I persuaded some small grayling and trout to attack Simon's fly so he was not water-whacked. I think perhaps in the extreme conditions Simon found the experience required a degree of athleticism to which he was not accustomed but it was hot enough to test anyone.

       The two Rs stuck mainly to dry fly but the grayling would rarely do more that swim half way to the surface before losing interest. I sent my flies down to greet them using relatively light Czech nymphs and was rewarded by the attention of several of them. An interesting day for me but damned frustrating for everyone else.

Tenbury   Comp.        30 June 2018

      Heatwave conditions and low water and a stretch that none of us had fished under these conditions before were not conducive to large catches and boy did we get small catches! Even sat in the shade, drenched with sweat after wielding a brush-hook and spade for an hour, did not result in pneumonia or even a desire for a fleece waistcoat (I think there is a name for those but I'm damned if I can remember - a jacquet. a tabard, a jacquard, I don't know if it's amnesia, Crutz-Jacob's disease, dementia, old age or Alzheimer's).

      I was armed with maggots and small cubes of luncheon meat. My swim was about 3 feet over bed-rock right across the river with a fairly fast current. I hadn't brought my maggot bag to hang round my neck and I couldn't set up my table to go alongside my chair because I couldn't push the bankstick into the bedrock. I floatfished for a couple of hours and caught two small but sizeable chub but couldn't feed regularly to do justice to the swim. Then I walked downstream along the ledge under the bank to where the water deepened. I ended up using a couple of AAA shot as a rolling ledger and caught lots of tiny chub and managed to have five over 6 inches to weigh-in 1-07-00. I never caught a single minnow but found I had gill-netted a loach in my landing net. A tricky 3 minute extraction job and I'm glad to say that the patient survived the operation with only two sore opercula to show for it.

      I was amazed to find that no-one else had caught anything so I had my first win for a long time.

Newbridge on Wye   Comp.  21 June 2018

      River low and clear with some additional water from the dams. Sunny day but a cool northerly breeze. I had made some measuring sticks (again), - 12 inches but marked at 10 inches as well. Discussion before we started decided on 10 inch limit for the day to see how it worked out.

       Dave caught five 8 inch trout (which didn't count)  in his day's catch but only a few grayling under 10 inches and only a few between 10 and 12 inches. These were all caught on small worms.

        Richard's three grayling were all 12+ on dry fly  while my ten had three under 12 inches all on Czech nymphs.

        I didn't have details of Peter Daper's catch but he fished dry fly and caught several under the 12 inch limit as well as over.   George fished cheese paste and only had the one fish, a trout over the 12 inches.

Wickens Pool Competition  May 19

        A glorious summers day - the dashing Prince Harry and Meghan to marry - it was all too much for Shirley; he left at half time with the excuse that he wanted to watch his son playing bowls! The tadpoles were overcome with emotion and formed black shoals at the back of the island. Question: I have been told and I have read that fish eat tadpoles - have any of my dear readers ever seen a fish eat a tadpole? I've seen oodles of pools stuffed with fish and tadpoles and they seem to co-exist happily.

        A glorious day but not without tragedy. Geoff lost a couple of carp but landed three despite his health problems, but when he came to weigh-in he discovered that the mice had eaten a large hole in his net and the fish  had all swum away. There can be few more disappointing moments in life.

         The day had its comic moments. I have poor hearing but eventually in the late afternoon  I realised that Dave   was struggling with his pole elastic so lent him my pole which I was not using.   Dave had jury rigged a topkit on his pole and when I presented him with a new toy he quickly dumped the jury rigged top kit and went about setting up a new rig on my pole. A carp, having waited all day for this moment, sidled up to the bait on the jury rigged top kit which Dave had abanboned and scampered off with  the top of Dave pole into the middle of the lake gurgling with laughter. All was not lost because when the competition had finished the punt with Connor aboard was launched and the top of the pole recovered.

         Dave said my pole was a good one as he caught four carp on it in the last three-quarters of an hour.

         Our thanks to Shirley for mowing the grass, it really does make for a pampered feeling and I can soak up plenty of that!

         On a more general note Tony reported that he had met the owner of the air strip at Newmill Bridge who was happy for members to drive down it to access the bottom end of the water. NB When driving along the airstrip keep to the edge of the strip furthest from the hedge. The planes land in a nose-up attitude so cannot see in front of them and watch the hedge for guidance.

         Our thanks to Tony for the work he has been doing spraying the vegetation again.

13 May 2018  Bank Clearance Newmill

Richard, Ed, Tony and I turned up on a lovely summers morning. Down the runway to the bottom boundary and Tony (Chainsaw Man) set about some large branches overhanging the path. I dug some steps down to the bottom peg hoping that the logging crew didn't drop in on me. We improved the access to several swims and cut off overhanging branches. Tony (now Sprayer Man) was ensuring access in other places. We looked in on the Millenium Oaks and pondered what to do about some of the enveloping trees.

Ed had brought with him a ferocious extending arm, rachet assisted pair of loppers which were most impressive cutting branches which I would have had to get the saw to. Richard and I are handy doing what elephants do in Burma - hauling branches - but much smaller branches than elephants manage.

Ed was intrigued by some black fungi which grow on dead wood (usually Ash). They produced these stone-hard hemispheres up to the size of a tennis ball which are named Cramp Balls or King Alfred's cakes in some parts of the country. They are so hard that they will blunt a chain saw used by the unwary.

Ed was also our cameraman on the day