Wye & Usk Foundation News Update April 2007

Despite a modest start to the Wye salmon season, the old adage of you won’t catch without a fly in the water rings true. Fish have been reported from almost all the Passport beats that have been fished – Whitney, Moccas/Red Lion, Brobury, Luggs Mouth and Caradoc all opening their accounts in recent weeks. Congratulations go to Phil Shellam who, alongside his father in law, were the first rods to try the newly available Brobury beat and were rewarded with a lovely springer on fly, losing another on a spinner.

Anglers and, therefore, reported catches have been absent from the passports other Middle Wye beats of Backney, White House and Holme Lacy. It is surprising that Middle Hill Court, despite several near misses and a false alarm thanks to a very well mended Kelt, remains the only Passport beat below Hay to have been fished that is yet to open its account. It is well worth trying some of these middle/lower river beats over the Easter weekend but please note that our Booking Office will be closed from 5pm Thursday until 9am Tuesday. Call us today if you would like to book some fishing over the Easter weekend, the weather forecast is set fair and it should be good - 01982 551 520

A second opinion on the reported Bigsweir 35lber revised its weight down to 25-27lb; still a cracking fish and our congratulations go out to Bob Peake the captor. We have also recently received news of 2 more big fish, this time from Cadora (25lb) and Wyesham (28lb).

Trout fishing last week was marred by a persistent easterly wind. This appeared to affect the Usk more that the Wye with a noticeable difference in mid day hatches and resultant sport. The grannom are now starting to hatch on the Wye and whilst the March Brown and large dark olives are yet to appear in significant numbers on the Usk, we are hoping they will finally get going with the forecast excellent weather over the weekend.

The fishing we offer you through the Passport scheme is entirely dependent on fishery owners who are willing to open their water to the wider public. There have, however, been a couple of recent issues that have threatened this relationship. Firstly, two people were caught fishing a voucher beat without posting any vouchers beforehand, even though they had vouchers on them. Despite promising to post them at the end of the day, we have had to ban them from the scheme, before the fishery owner withdrew completely. Secondly, we would like to remind all anglers that a condition of their booking is that they supply an accurate catch return either by phone, email website or post. http://www.wyeuskfoundation.org/fishing/returns.php

On a more positive note, the good news for all anglers is that a real time webcam will available soon through the website giving you a live image of a river Wye gauge at Erwood. Images of the height and clarity for the hours previous will also be displayed to show you what the river is doing. This will be the first of what we hope will be a wider network.

Many thanks to all who entered our caption competition. We had a lot of entries topped by a wonderful take on a classic A.A. Milne character. The full results can be seen on the website:
http://www.wyeuskfoundation.org/news/notices/champagnefish07.php