Tag Archives: fishing

Fishing the river Usk

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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 🙂

New box of river nymphs complete!

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Been doing my best on completing this box of nymphs to get started on a smaller box ready for the future trips out!

I’m always looking at new patterns and trolling through fly images on good old uncle goggle looking for new ideas most nights. There are some real awesome people out there tying and always something new to give a go!

We all have our go-to nymphs and patterns that we have full faith in but we are always looking for that edge. Over the years of competing for wales in the river internationals and meeting some real awesome anglers, I’ve collected patterns from most and this is where I mix and match patterns for different rivers. Every little helps they say!

The next box will be more for grayling for the winter months so I’ll post some images after it’s complete. Tight lines guys and girls

Welsh river trials on the river Tawe , leg 1

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Well we asked for rain and we got it but way to much and on the day of the bloody trial. Typical hey!

Condition are not the best river rising and slightly coloured but the weather says it’s going to pass over around midday, Fingers crossed for the boys because it’s going to get interesting.

Today I’ll be controlling Terry Evans / Wales manager and good friend!

Always a tense time waiting for the time to kick off, it’s like time slows down. Your thoughts go onto that first fish and to get it the net to settle them early match nerves!

My thoughts on condition and looking at the water and height, Ide be using the French leader with a variety of colours, silver beads, black, orange and even white but with black pearly body’s and flashy Darker flies, Not forgetting the streamers in places!

It’s going to be interesting how Terry is going to attack the first beat and get the best out of it. Fast runs with good depth and lovely long pools, Looks quite fishy

Peg 2

Well terry headed into the head of this run and took a fish straight away but didn’t measure at 17.2cm Very unlucky and was needed due to conditions changing quite fast. Water was coming up and all the branches and rubbish started to come down. Most casts coming back with weed or small branches attached.

Finally a measure came in falling to a black small streamer pulled through the edge!

Not long after terry hooked a good fish but spat the hook while playing, Not a good thing to happen in a comp that is tuff Fishing but you must not think about the what ifs and carry on looking for the next one!

Conditions are changing by the minute now, There could be a few blanks in these early sessions for a few but that’s comp fishing, you haft to fish to the conditions and this could happen on comp day, You must be able to adapt to the changing conditions as quickly as possible.

As you can see in a short space of time the difference in water level after the first sessions below. The river was getting big and nasty!

The day was turning into a nightmare for the anglers and I was very glad I retained my place due to winning the brown bowl and didn’t haft to trial

There was much talk about blanks and how hard it was getting but the rain blew over and the river peeked so it started to drop quickly and the colour started to run out in the afternoon session. Look at that rise :S not good!

Still pushing but more fish able Terrys afternoon peg was a cracker but it wasn’t going to be easy due to a small river running in on the left side looking up river giving it more colour. But there was a seam between rivers that screamed fish. Terry managed 1 in the 3rd session and 3 in the last session.

Good angling in the condition for sure.

Overall a very tuff and hard trial but fish were caught and the first part is over. Next the taff for the final! Good luck to boys and good hunting for that one. Hopefully better condition

I’ll leave you with a few photos of the day below and what the boys had to contend with. If it was a normal days Fishing you would have packed up and gone for a pint! But this is comp fishing 🙂

Finale results for leg 1

What a day at Draycote Water

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I’ve never really been one for lake fishing, but I’ve been giving it a go lately… As you all know I’m more of a rivers man than anything but Kieron Jenkins a good mate of mine said we would have a day out on the boat for a change. I’ve always fished the banks for trout and never the boat so it was something new to me and I was quite excited to give it a bash to tell the truth…

We arrived in Coventry, just a few miles outside of Draycote, we made our way into Dunchurch to the GreenMan pub for breaky. Just after 9am we arrived at the water and made our way from the tackle shop to the water where we were making our first drift of the day. Kieron gave me an Airflo Di 3 sweep with 2 blobs on a cast around 16 ft. The point fly was a black and green blob and the top dropper was something a little more colourful. It did however take a little time to get used to the long leader with two fluffy birds on the cast 🙂 As we set the drogue, Kie explained that I had to find the depth that which the fish were feeding or settled at by counting the fly line down, 5, 10, 15 seconds and so on. The retrieve was a mixture of figure of eights to fish the flies slow or faster, pulling if they are aggressive.  As the first drift was under way my first cast I counted down 10 seconds and started to pull quickly in short bursts. Seconds later the line locked up and and I struck into the first fish of the day, a lovely overwintered rainbow and god they can fight! Much stronger than anything in the river for it’s size, I loved ever seconds of it…

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For the rest of the drift there were fish coming out everywhere, kie just went to town on me taking 8 fish to my lonely 2… all within 10 minutes! It was great to watch, you see nothing like that on a river. We went back through the same drift taking a few more and then decided to go look somewhere else, boats seemed to just ‘appear’ after we netted a few fish and were drifting pretty close behind us.

Kieron decided to go right up the top end of the lake to the shallow waters to give the buzzers a blast. It wasnt long and he was working his magic by taking a load on the brightest buzzer ive ever seen :O I wasnt doing too bad with a few good size trout to the boat, all be them stockies but what else do you expect this time of year? By this time i started to get the hang of it. I watched Kie cast hell of a long line across to a huge bush over hanging the waters edge, as he pulled the slack line to tightern up, there was a massive bow wave behind his fly… The fished must have come around 15 yards then bang, fish on! I actually said it was a whale as is breached the surface! !hat a fight and what a lump of a rainbow… It must have went over 7lb.

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As the day went on we were nailing fish everywhere and it was just cracking sport, we must have had over 25+ fish each to the boat. I know it’s not always like this but what a day and what a great trip out on a boat with a good friend, I think I can see myself doing a little more of this in the future :)…. We’ve just booked a boat for opening day on Blagdon… Look out Saturday!

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River Taff water level

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This chart hasn’t been updated yet but when you see it next it will be up in the flooding is possible area for sure.  The river Taff and river Rhondda are evil with this relentless rain and fishing is a no go for sure! Be a while before any kind of angler wets a line:(

This is what it looks like in real time below and as you can see its WILD!!!

Follow me on YouTube!

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Over the last year or so I have enjoyed this blogging malarkey and creating some short fly fishing videos. I enjoy showing you and hopefully you enjoy me giving details and demonstrations on how to fish various methods such as the french leader and duo, also some fly tying videos describing my top patterns.

My YouTube channel is slowly filling up and im hoping it will continue to increase with your help and support. If you have any ideas on what you would like to see, don’t hesitate to comment and let me know what you want. Im up for anything!

Click the TV below to view my YouTube channel, so search me as MrTrout666

Taffing it again

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I havent had much chance to get out for a bit it so i made the most of it by hitting the river first light hoping to bump into a slab feeding on the sherry spinners from the previous day. Well that’s what i was hoping on. There were a few around but nothing on the fin so the french leader was set up on my greys 10 ft with around 6 ft of stroft ABR to the point fly ( 2.8m Hares ear) and on the dropper ( 2m PT flash back around 20″ from there.

The water  level is so low at the moment and the river is on its bones and in a few places the weed has been exposed so bad that all you can see is weed and no water. Its made a few good places really hard to fish.

Hitting the back-end of the run fishing the opposite side of the fast water i made a few short casts into the fast water to see if they were in the flow and letting the nymphs come round me and bringing them back up in the water column with a few short jerks to see if i could induce a take, after a few tries i managed to take one brownie. After moving on up the run a little further i started to fish the slack water amongst a few  submerged boulders where i have had a few monsters in the past. But nothing this time.

As i moved out of one run into anther long run with a good flow i thought I would spend a little more time fishing the leader with one  small nymphs on, after only a few casts i was into a grayling in the half  a lb range. Slipping that one lovely lady back i was quickly into a second and a third and a fourth so on, I managed six in one part of the run in no time.  with  that little bit of excitement i moved in to the head of the run where its a little deeper and where there are a few large boulders sticking out of  the flow. This called for a larger nymph, 3.5m tunsten hares ear pattern with a red tag for the tail, i picked out three not bad size trout out after a little bit of persuasion. Few photos of the run and its inhabitants

Just a few random shots of the day

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River Taff today

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Today me and my friend Paul Jenkins ‘Bushy’ fished the newly leased ‘Ospreys’ streach of the River Taff at Cilfynydd towards Abercynon.

We met at the Car park in Cilfynyd ind’est at 9am.  We walked to what was the old boundary of the Ospreys stretch and started to walk the newly acquired waters – looking at the pools and debating what methods to use. As always, I took two fly rods, My  Greys streamflex 10ft 3# and My favourite – Greys GS2 8ft 4#. Carrying two rods can sometimes be a pain, but due to the frequent but sporadic hatches of Olives, Yellow mays and Brook duns having two rods enables me to swap and change without re-tying my leaders or methods and cover that fish that s rising before it goes down.

To start, I tackled up with a team of flies on a french leader. My french leader consists of a 9 meter tapered  leader and a duo coloured indicator nylon.

The business end consisted of 6ft of 4lb Stroft ABR and two jigs spaced around 18 inches apart. The flies where basically hears ears with 3mm tungsten heads – gold and black.

After a quick chat with Bushy, we decided to fish – fish for fish. Meaning one of us would fish and the other watching, I like this method of fishing because it allows me to watch different anglers in different situation. As Bushy is one of the top class anglers in the country, it’s always good to keep a sharp eye on what flies ‘he’s putting on and what he’s doing in different water.

We worked our way up the stretch taking around 6-7 fish out of the first 100 yards between us, It was obvious we were doing something right! The river was on good form although being low and clear, the fish were very obliging in taking our nymphs.

Once fishing the fast pocket water, we could see a nice long glide in the horizon! So it was on our bike and towards to pool we went. Creeping and peering through the pea shooters it was obvious this was a big fish pool! And that it was! After carefully negotiating my way across the slow deep pool, trying not to fall in or spook the pool, we got to the fishable side of the pool where the run was on the opposite side and the eddy was in easy reach. It was running about 6ft deep, too deep to wade but just the right depth for me to french nymph. After working the crease closest to me, where the quicker water meets the slack on the inside it was obvious the fish wern’t there! Or was it my flies not getting deep enough? So it was into the box, and on with the 3.5mm tungsten. First cast, indicator stopped and upriver she went, with nothing but my 3 weight rod to stop her I knew I had a fight on my hands. Running, diving and doing everything possible it could to free my hook I gently persuaded her into my net. And after a quick photo, off she went to fight another day.

After taking maybe 20 fish between us,  and working near enough a mile upstream Kieron, Pauls son joined us. Kieron tackled up with basically the same as me, two jigs on a french leader.. although they were from his secret box which doesn’t come out a lot 😉 I have tried to have a look but it seems to disappear quicker than the little minnows in the shallows. He was quickly into his first fish, taking one second cast around the pound mark on a red tag jig. Bushy spotted another just swirl under the surface and the next cast, it was in the net.

Moving swiftly upstream, into a fast but shallow run I could see Kieron was into a good fish. I rushed downstream getting the camera ready and into video mode and into a good position to watch the fish slip into the net, but as he was lifting the rod to lure the fish, the fly came out and the point fly hooked into the adipose fin. Take a look at the video below of how not to land a fish! LOL


 

The river above where we met, started to get wider, slower and deeper. By this time there were not so many flies hatching and the fishing started to slow down. So we started to move to the head of the pools taking the easier fish just to build our numbers up. Not long later we decided to make a move after a long day searching with better than expected results.