I'm very conscious of the fact I vowed to post more on this forum, but also that fishing opportunities have been limited recently due to the weather so I thought I'd rip off one of my posts on a UK forum from last year.
I was fortunate enough to secure a day on a private beat of the River Monnow near the Wales-England Border. I set off from Birmingham (that's Birmingham, England ;) ) cursing the fact that I had to chose the one day when the weather was "wet and windy". The 'windy' bit turned out to be pretty accurate, but mostly the rain held off - there was even a brief period just after lunch when the sun shone. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Prior to the event, I'd discussed tactics with a friend and devotee of the Monnow and he'd emphasised just how important the right pork pie (British delicacy) was to the success of the day and on his recommendation I stopped off at Mailes Butchers in a sleepy little Welsh village called Ewyas Harold. And, to paraphrase Agent Cooper (obscure reference to Twin Peaks), a 'damn fine pie' it was too. On t the fishing - most of the morning was taken with exploring the beat and casting into likely looking pools, with not a lot of success. I fished the duo and took one beautiful little wild brown trout on a small bead head nymph and one larger fish on a stimulator but it was pretty tough going, particularly in some of the more exposed parts of the beat. Around about lunchtime the sun came out briefly which was definitely a sign that lunch should be taken. Whilst sat by the river eating my lunch I noticed a few mayfly starting to come off and a few fish starting to rise, so I switched to dries (Grey Wulff and Cul de Canon) and had a pretty successful time of it, taking fish throughout the afternoon until about 6pm when the wind strengthened and it got noticeably cooler. After another couple of fish and 50+ Himalayan Balsam (evil invasive weed) pulled, I called it quits at around 8pm. All-in-all a great day - the Monnow is a fantastic river and a testament to the work put in by the Monnow Fisheries Association (http://www.monnow.org) to restore this river to it's former glory as a perfect wildlife habitat. I'm looking forward to returning there this year.
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