The River Angler

After finally recovering from a touch of mountaineering the previous day, we managed to tackle a far more muscle friendly stretch. We headed just above Ross to fish a club water.  Initial appearances were good.  It was quite overgrown in the most part which would indicate a lightly fished stretch.   Obviously nearer the car park there were more signs of human activity but once you started to walk upstream a bit, that evidence grew less and less.

The Wye

I wandered up to what appeared to be the upper limit of the beat and found a couple of very nice swims.  Access wasn’t too bad and I had soon cast a lead around the swim to see what the bottom was like.  It appeared to be pretty good, although I did get snagged a couple of times.  I was fishing just off of a bend and a nice crease went across from the nearside bank right over to the opposite bank.  I particularly enjoy these swims, especially if using two rods (which I very rarely do) as it gives you plenty of room to work with on these bigger rivers.

Using two decent sized open end feeders packed with pellet and plugged with groundbait, I started to build up the swim.  It didn’t take too long to get a response and I soon bumped a fish off but followed it up with a couple of nice barbel.  They put up a very spirited fight and were in tip top condition.

It was a very hot day and I needed to keep getting up and wandering about, otherwise I find myself just dozing off in the heat of the day.  Anyway another couple of fish quickly followed, including one just over 8lbs, plus a couple of small chub.  Then the swim just died.  So during a quiet spell I went for a walk with Geoff.  After a bit of investigative work we found that in fact the beat finished quite a bit further upstream.  We wandered up and found several really fishy areas.  By now it was getting a little late and due to the heat and near exhaustion from the previous day, I just couldn’t find the energy to carry my gear another 1/2 mile upstream to what looked like the best area on the river.  However it’s there to be explored another day.

The Wye

So eventually we arrived back at our swims and said that the next day we would travel much lighter and visit this newly discovered Eden.  In the meantime it was back to the barbel.  For some strange reason my swim had completely died as I said previously.  I did manage two more barbel and a couple of chub but otherwise it was pretty quiet.  Geoff was not too far below me and struggled to find any fish.  Kevin also seemed to be having a difficult time with just one small barbel.  Hero of the day was without a doubt Danny.  He had setup lower downstream.  After taking a couple of chub we heard his somewhat excited voice on the walkie talkie.  He had caught a very big fish.  The first time he weighed it, it went 9lb 14oz and the second time it went 10lb 4oz but he needed some assistance to weigh the fish properly.  Kevin was the closest and he eventually confirmed the weight at 10lb 4oz.  Danny was over the moon and rightly so.  Doubles from the Wye and comparatively rare, when one considers just how many fish are caught from the river.  We must have had many hundreds of barbel and this was the first double.  So well done Dan.

Danny’s 10lb 4oz

We decided enough was enough and grabbed some food from Ross before retiring for the night.  The next morning we awoke with the intention of fishing the same stretch.  However about 8am the skies became quite dark and a huge clap of thunder shook the caravan.  Then the skies quite literally opened and the rain came down in stair rods.  It was torrential and lasted nearly 3 hours.  This would ruin the fishing today.  The influx of coloured water would simply make fishing almost impossible.  So we resigned ourselves to a fishing free day and so decided to eat, drink and be merry, well almost.

After the storm had passed

We wandered down to the river once the rains abated.  Low and behold there was an angler!  We ventured along the rather soggy banks looking at the deep red/brown raging river.  As I approached the angler I realised it was Trefor West.  After a long chat, we left him in peace to carry on with his fishing.  Before the rain had started he had caught a couple of small barbel.  We saw him again much later and he had given up as the river conditions had worsened.  So at least we had made the right decision.  We were due to be on the river for our last session the following day but it was above Hereford.  After driving up to Hereford we saw that the river was in much better condition here and after talking to Woody, we felt much more confident that we would be able to fish on the last day.