We booked a cottage on the banks of the Wye for one week from 17th October. We really love the tranquility of the area, coupled with the ability to hide the car keys and just wander down to the river. Our hideaway is located amongst some of the most spectacular and peaceful environments in the UK, adjacent to what I consider the best river in the country.
We've had wonderful catches over the years; barbel to double figures, chub to 28" long; salmon; grayling etc., but we've never had much success with the smaller silver fish. In recent times though, their numbers have grown, whether this is due to the work of the Wye and Usk Foundation performing habitat improvements, or merely river cycles I don't know, but it really looks a well balanced, healthy river now, with an interesting mix of species, including the furry otter!
On the Saturday, I was joined by 'the Monkey,' Dan, our eldest daughter's partner, for a short intro to the river. Dan had no experience of this type of fishing, so we baited with spam and a small lead and caught a chub apiece, but only around the pound mark. The river was very low and clear and made fishing for better sized fish, tough.
The next evening I fished for about three hours into the dark, perched on the pontoon at the bottom of a bridge stanchion, one of my favourite places. Here again, the fishing was difficult as I only caught a fistful of chub to 2lb, but Lee, our eldest son, and an equally enthusiastic angler was fishing downstream and had fared worse with only one chub, albeit a bigger one of 2.5lb.
It was clear that the fish were not in their normal haunts, probably due to the lower water level; I thought that if they were in hiding during the day, they might venture into the shallows as the light fell. To fish there required using sufficient lead to pin the bait to the river bed. This isn't our normal style of fishing because we prefer the stealthy approach, but the tactic seemed to work as I caught a small chub followed by a reasonable one of 4.25lb. Lee, not to be outdone and using similar tactics, then caught a chub of nearly 5lb which meant he had the bragging rights for the entire evening, not something that he let slip.
Lee and I decided to try something different the next day and drove to Builth Wells, one of the best places to fish for grayling. The weather forecast was dire, with strong winds followed by torrential rain, but in true angling fashion we completely ignored it and got soaking wet. Having got to the local hardware shop at 9am and purchased the day ticket, we arrived at the river to see waves with white crests being blown upstream. This is one of our favourite places to long-trot, and we decided that as we get such few opportunites, we would try anyway. I guess we should have known better, with the wind driving the falling leaves scattered on the surface upstream, line control was virtually impossible and we failed miserably with a few fish each.
But
Lee caught a nice trout followed by a small grayling and a host of minnows. I had a small salmon parr followed by a small grayling and then I changed to a small lead and fished the same line with regular loosefeeding and gradually the better grayling appeared, averaging a decent size as you can see from the photograph. Just then the heavens opened and I caught the best grayling of well over 1.5lbs but at that point the clay from the quarry in the hills was washed into the river, changing it from a nice tint, to totally opaque, and as the rain fell harder, we decided to call it a day and head back to the cottage.
The following day, the river was up but only about 12" and was tinted very slightly. Having been unable to trot the previous day, Lee and I thought it was time to have a try at floatfishing the river below the cottage. I started off trotting with worm catching chub regularly up to 1.5lb, whereas Reg, fishing in the next swim upstream was trotting with maggots and catching a dace every run. As the chub sport slowed, I switched to maggot and caught dace too. I have never seen such a catch of dace in a couple of hours, we bagged over 150 of them plus my chub. These weren't small dace either with many over half a pound as the photograph shows.
As darkness fell, it became increasingly difficult to see the float at any range so I changed tackle and put on a very light lead and rolled spam down the swim, holding it at the tail of the line that I had been feeding. As I had hoped, the feed coupled with the activity had drawn the first barbel of the week into the swim. It was a beautiful fish of nearly 8lbs but was fin perfect without any marks or missing scales, just as if it had never been caught before. It was a truly spectacular way to end a memorable day's fishing. It is years since I've caught a bag of fish like this and having taken them on the float, the whole experience turned into a red letter day.
It was a hard act to follow on the next day although we tried to repeat it. The river had fallen back but the colour was marginally stronger, which made the floatfishing harder; even so, the fishing was still exceptional and we fished for a couple of hours or so before dark. As Lee was down from Edinburgh and we don't get too many chances to fish together, we decided to trot in the same swim, which may seem novel and unworkable (which it was really) but gave us time to talk as we fished.
We only caught about 100 or so fish this time with more great dace, chub to 2lb, perch, gudgeon, bleak - but not small ones, some really good bleak as you can see. As the light fell, I left to pack the bags for an early start in the morning (and I'd forgotten my torch which made walking back a bit dicey); Lee carried on trying for barbel and less than half an hour later, he managed to bag a nice one, which was the perfect end to a fabulous week's fishing.