Spent a week during June on the banks of the Wye. It has become one of my favourite places to fish. Yes, it’s a prolific barbel and chub river, but for me its the stunning scenery and the river’s diversity that won me over so quickly.
The Wye
Staying at Whitehouse Farm (a caravan club certified site) opens up this area of the middle Wye. Being based near Foy means we can travel either up or downstream to find planty of beautiful, prolific stretches. Whether they be member’s club waters, day ticket stretches or Wye and Usk controlled, there are plenty to choose from.
We like to mix the week up with visits to all of the above mentioned stretches. Being a member of Ross Angling Club gives me access to plenty of good river and at an affordable price. Next we target W&U as they offer limited numbers on their stretches, so you tend to get the place to yourself. Lastly we may go for the standard day ticket stretches and some of these can be very good.
So after arriving to find the river several feet up and chocolate brown in colour we wondered what the week would bring. I have to say that the Wye does fish better with some extra water on, but I prefer it when the colour is dropping out a little and it’s not pushing through quite as hard.
Still we were here and so gave it our best shot. We only fished a few hours but managed a few between us and we all caught which is nice. We hoped that for the second day the river may have dropped a little and the colour too. Sadly it seemed no different but the fishing was more productive. We ended up with about 20 barbel between the three of us. Sadly the session was cut short by the weather. A big thunderstorm moved in and I don’t do thunderstorms! As Freedie mercury would say “Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening….”.
We then moved on to a Ross club stretch. It turned out to be a very attractive, tree lined section. I’m sure its one that deserves some further exploration. It looked quite varied in terms of depths and flow and on a return visit I hope we can wander more extensively. Still today we just targeted one area. The river was still quite coloured but the flow didn’t seem quite so pushy. I fished a bigish cage feeder with Hinders barbel bomb and added mixed pellet. It’s a deadly combination in the right conditions. I use 2 superglued medium elips on the hair to finish it off. Today proved good for me as I ended up with 10 barbel to about 8lbs and 2 bonus shad. These are members of the herring family and fight like tigers. they were only small but boy have they got big mouths on em. They reminded me of Tarpon.
We targeted a few W&U waters over the last 3 days. One was a new stretch for us and certainly one of the prettiest we have visited. It was in a lovely wooded valley. The scenery really was beautiful. The river appeared to be very weedy and so it was to prove. The fishing was tough. Well finding a clear spot was tough. We all ended up catching but lost a few in the weed. I had a great day taking 13 fish. Geoff and Kev caught a few too.
The last two days were at a familiar stretch for us and we were joined by Dan. Over the next two days we caught in the region of 80 barbel. Great fishing in great surroundings and a wonderful end to an enjoyable week.
The River Angler 
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