I was really looking forward to my regular October break on the Wye after coarse fish, and after some rain, I thought the river would be in perfect condition – until I got there and it was at the 5m mark! In old money, that’s 16.5 feet higher than the last time I fly fished and as it was the first real flush through of the year, the river was full of silt and visibility was about 3mm.
Philip, a friend of ours wanted to see barbel caught and upon arriving joked the fishing was off, but his jaw dropped when I said no, there was a chance we could find some. Fishing from mid afternoon to dusk in the deeper, slower flowing slacks with minimal turbulence, I opted for the pellet rig Pete Reading had shown me on the Hants Avon with a heavy through lead. Lee, my son, opted for our traditional big lump of spam, also on a through lead to keep the rig as simple and clean as possible to try down to keep leaf build up.
Lee won hands down catching three barbel of about 4, 6 and 7 lbs in a couple of hours, whereas I didn’t have a touch on pellet.
The next day the water was lower, only about 4m (13ft) up so Lee reverted to a simple through line system again and told me that I was focussing too much on the rig and not enough on the river. I thought about that and decided he was right so went back to a simple spam rig with a 1oz arlesley bomb and was immediately into a chub of about 4lb.
I tried prebaiting and using hemp as an attractor, all of which resulted in no bites, the only thing that worked consistently was a big lump of span in a simply leger rig. From then on we both caught in various swims along the length catching barbell to 9lbs with most of them in the 8-9lb range and I had another chub of 5lb 2oz.
Whilst we caught these fish, the conditions prevented us fishing for grayling, dace and pike, and fishing in the above method can be very boring, even when touch legering as we do, so sessions were short, but there was still time to watch kingfishers, nuthatches, long-tailed tits et all. There really is an abundance of wildlife along the Wye in such picturesque surroundings.