Over the weekend me and my good mate sam went and had a little look at the river Usk in Mardy. It’s been a long time since I’ve fished the beat, I think it was the year before on the March browns and we caught it perfect if I can remember rightly!

We got to the river quite early and bumped into another angler walking off the beat but he was on the Wye and Usk passport, so after a little chat and saving the guy some cash in his future trips we headed up river scanning the river for anything moving! We did spot a fish but it only popped up the once. Time was around 10.30am and there were some Signs of fly activity!

Fly life this time of the year can be a right mix-and-match. Olives, small olives, brookduns, yellow mays, mayfly, black gnats and many more! It Can be a minefield for anglers matching the size and pattern that the trout lock onto!

While waiting on the trout to react to the flies, me and Sam done a little nymphing in the fast water and the deeper pools with good results. We both got busted up and was a little disappointed but that’s how it goes.

We did catch around half a dozen between us, nothing big but pure quality!

Finally moving out of the fast water, we made our way to the long tails hoping to find trout rising and there were a few taking olives and the odd bigger duns so we set up the dry rods. I was using my 10ft 3wt with a leader around 16/18ft for Presentation

But just before Stalking a trout rising on the far bank, I watched a guy for a while before going over to chat with him. His name was Glyn and he was quite new to it so I lent a hand changing his set up and helping him get better presentation. Was great chatting about fishing and we dropped onto the subject of the fishing blogs he reads. He said he reads a blog taff Diaries 🙂 made me smile because it was all good. I then Re-introduced myself as the writer. we both laughed for a bit after!

I love how fishing can bring people together from all walks of life on the river. It was great chatting away about flies and leaders and I hope I helped and explained it enough to understand

Sam getting ready to slip the net under yet another lovely river Usk wild brown trout on the dry!

These are the flies I fished throughout the day below. Simple but they do the job 🙂