Conditions remain good on most of the river and one would expect catches of 2sw fish to accelerate over the rest of the month.

TODAY'S FISH.     21lbs reported from Glanwye. No other details.
Fish from 4th May to Don Macer Wright at Wyebanks. 10lbs


This is a picture of the fish caught last Saturday from Sheepwash. I wrongly attributed it to owner Ian Thorpe when it was actually caught by his brother Andrew. My apologies.   Nice fish. Picture by Tony Mobley.

See below a letter sent to me at the RWGA and to the WSA.   I have to say the writer tells it how it is for the majority of anglers on the Wye . I agree and thank him for the effort put into his letter -obviously from the heart..  Like the writer we try and tell it how it is and stand up for the ordinary paying angler and inform him of what's going on. Many of you of course don't care about the politics and the deals behind the scenes and just want to go fishing.  Fine, that's your choice but lack of involvement has lead us where we are today.

So thanks to the author and letters like this will ensure we will keep on doing what we do for the good of the River Wye and it's SALMON and its paying anglers..

Letter to the River Wye Gillies Association

I’m minded to drop you a line about my 2014 season so far. I fish the lower river in the Spring, and am one of those “visiting anglers” as I live 100+ miles away. Despite knowing that spinning in the early season seems to account for pretty well all the fish, I have resisted and stuck with the fly for year after year, but this season have thought a nice compromise would be a very traditional yellow and green wooden minnow and wye lead arrangement. So far I’ve hooked three fish after about 15 days on the river but have landed none of them. Encouraging and disappointing. Previously I’ve used sunken lines and copper tubes to get down to depth, but the old wye minnow method seems to provoke a bit more of a reaction - when the fish are there - which is really what provokes me.

Are we in a lull between the very early “cold water” springers and the later “warmer water” run? It strikes me that just at the moment the river is not being run by fresh fish, and those that came in earlier are now very widely dispersed so an encounter is minimised. Result : feeling that “I’m fishing an empty river”. Not pleasant after the rod and licence fees, the costs of petrol, accommodation, food, drink and tackle plus the holiday allowance and arrangements required to be away for a few days... True, you never know when a salmon will take, but even I can see that the Wye is not an improving river.

I caught my first salmon in 2010 after many years of determined fly fishing. I had no tutoring until I took an hours Sportfish casting tuition (instead of buying a WUF day ticket) and had a day with Stuart Smith when he was setting up the Wye Salmon Association (instead of an hour’s Sportfish tuition), but it was still another two years before I caught my first Wye salmon. Since then, having come on a bit and fished some prime waters regularly, I have caught just 7 more fish. Don’t ask me over how many fishing days this is (hundreds...), but my Wye catch return is as follows :

2001 nil

2002 nil

2003 nil

2004 nil

2005 nil

2006 nil

2007 nil

2008 nil

2009 nil

2010 x2

2011 x3

2012 x3, one lost

2013 nil

2014 nil to date (May), three lost

Man, that’s cost me a fortune, and does demonstrate a streak of commitment in me, but without getting into the philosophy on the joys of being a salmon fisher, I’d really be better off going to Scotland instead for a week or two in prime time on that money and forgetting about flogging the Wye (which isn’t far off a dead horse) and the seemingly endless mileage and expense of my regular visits.

And now I hear the Wye Salmon Association’s Semi Natural Rearing Ponds are in jeopardy of being banned? Witness Joe Cobley’s fin clipped fish and tell me they don’t work!

I want to see that river stocked and stocked with Wye salmon until the river is full of fish and something of its former glory. We have the technology, we have the breeding stock (just), and the river needs it. Honestly, it’s a crying shame to see the old overgrown, unused cribs, the crumbled away built banks and the decayed steps and paths (though amazingly some owners and gillies seem completely apathetic to offers of help to make them usable again), and the derelict huts rotting away. It’s a crying shame to see the plague of unregulated canoes with their often ignorant paddleclangers shouting and banging their way down the stream, letting their dogs out into the fields for a crap and thumping their way across the pools. At its worst its a scene of abandoned bonfires, litter, turds, antagonism and insolence. They get no advice from the operators, and there are simply too many of them to not effect the environment - which includes the atmosphere, the tranquility, the peace and the beauty - and which now includes hundreds of fish eating, legally protected sea birds!

Our whole world is managed, What we see is man made. That old fishery, the wonderful Wye in its heyday, was heavily managed, heavily biased towards the salmon : no pike would go back in, no passing heron would be tolerated - it was all un-natural in the strictest sense - but it was also a working river, with the unruly disturbance of barges and local traffic, and the salmon were there in their thousands, just like they had been throughout their entire evolution! They were left alone at sea then favoured in the river, fished to near extinction there, then nurtured back again - and so they need that nurturing again. How damnable that should be overlooked and even disallowed! How absurd when the upper river environment alone has been improved for them at massive expense, but to hell with them over their actual progeny and predation!

From thousands and thousands to what now? Few and far between - fishing for a miracle - being there at the right place at the right time - intersecting your lure with the trajectory of the odd passing fish - hopeless odds - having to get to the river before the hoards come down and dash that slim chance - having to wait for the evening and the resumption of some peace (a few quiet canoes does nothing any harm) - the thousands I spend each year for what success? What that river used to be....it’s a disgrace.

Two of us recently fished for two days dawn till dusk. Never saw a thing, never had a touch. More recently another four day stint with not a single knock. The conditions have been good : “fining off after a spate” with the river clearing as it falls gradually, showers to top it up, no unmanaged weed blooms to clog the flow yet, good running water, prime time in Springtime. Hardly a damn thing in the river, and there’s enough rods out to catch plenty if there was plenty - but there’s not.

There might be a bit of a lull between the 3SW and 2SW “runs” - if that’s what they can be called now - perhaps that’s all that’s happening at the moment, but flies through the pools, minnows through the deep holes... I know there are no guarantees in salmon fishing, but there need to be fish there at least. The Wye and Usk Foundation have improved the habitat and provided the niche for nature to fill. Fine. Great. Thank you very much for spending millions on that. Well done. But it isn’t working. Where are the fish to show that it is? That river needs stocking heavily for year after year with its own protected, nurtured kin until it has recovered - at least to something like a salmon river. All the Wye is now is a river that has the sporadic, pathetic remnants of its salmon run left. What a horrific tragedy, what a disgusting disgrace.

Keep pressing for re-stocking! Keep doing it even if the politicians / directors / chairmen don’t support it (thus protecting their own agendas), keep doing it even if it’s made illegal - stand there in court and show how absurd the situation is to the public and the press, show the ties that bind you, show your support from the owners that can, the anglers that are the eyes and ears of the river. Point to the deterioration of value, point to the loss to wildlife and our natural heritage, point to the successes that can be demonstrated by facts and numbers everywhere else, but not in the Wye eh?! Humbug! Talk about trout farms, talk about salmon farms, talk about the Tyne, talk about propagation, breeding, rearing, fish farming technology, facts and numbers... including the pathetic rod returns.

Everyone involved in salmon fishing on the Wye knows there is a big problem with it. Its called “not many fish”. The remedy is in the way the river and the sea is managed. Its called “make more fish”, “take less fish” and “leave some food for the fish”. The first point “make more fish” we can do something directly about. Witness the technology of trout and salmon farming. Make more fish, put them in the river, then make some more, and more, and more until there are so many they can do all that's necessary to sustain themselves by themselves.

Then when the paddleclangers come through, shout, throw stones, take a shit on the bank with their dogs, the fish will still be there afterwards. Then when the river is low, the fish will be in the pools. Then when its high they will run up to that nice habitat waiting for them. Then the birds, pike, old trout and otters can eat them. Then the netsman can catch them. But then there will still be fish in the river. At the moment its a near empty disgrace.

I may not fish much more this year. Lean times when there should be plenty rather takes it out of you - like another long drive home after yet more empty days.

Keep up the good work Geoff and the RWGA!

Keep up the excellent work Stuart Smith and the WSA!!

Regards,

Rod Visitor