I see Charlie H has taken umbrage at my mention of his post regarding the Wye on one of the Internet forums.   He complains about double standards when he has no right of reply on here.

This is not a forum. The daily report is a catalogue of things that happen on or about the Wye, both from an angling and political point of view and is for the information of those interested.
He chose to tell us all that we had in fact done reasonably well on the Wye in what, taking EVERYTHING into account was one of our worst ever seasons.
You can debate the reasons for it until the cows come home.  The fact is it was grim, a fact obvious to all those guys who fish up and down the river on a daily/weekly basis and quite frankly we don't need to be told by someone sitting in London or another guy in his computer chair up North that we should be grateful it wasn't worse.

The guys who submit their information, observations and catches to compile this report  are the practical anglers on the Wye on a daily basis and I do my best to reflect those views. The view was that there were not the numbers of fish remotely available to give a much greater rod catch.  We always have excuses, some of which may well be perfectly legitimate, ranging from too much water, too little, bad spawning season in previous years, poor smolt migration, poor sea survival, algae and so on and so on.

He knows I have no right of reply on FFF having been banned on that forum by Mr Bradshaw who wielded the axe to almost anyone who dared to be persistently critical or questioning of WUF.  I was and so were several others and I make no apology for it either.  We had much bile given back which often went unchecked and in fact still does.   When someone on the internet says to you, "Who rattled your cage -is someone sh+++++g your wife or daughter" you tend to get a bit upset.  That post was merely deleted but the perpetrator allowed to continue.  Who said it?- Not that many culprits are there are there ! (And no it was not Charlie H)

So we will continue to report on here what Wye anglers want to say with verified catches as far as possible and information from any sources that may be of interest or may impact on the river or its salmon anglers.  My email addresses are uskside1@tiscali.co.uk or geoff@rwga.co.uk. so feel free Charlie or anyone else with any news or views.

Having said that it must be mildly interesting and informative - they all seem to read it and quote from it from time to time. Very gratifying. Thanks!!!
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On that same biased forum FFF the WUF Director also chose to give his own view on the season, See below.   I couldn't possibly comment but perhaps I will make just one..   He seems to think upper river catches were 'acceptable'.  Really!!!!.  His own beat only produced 3 fish all season and the beats either side 6 and 3 respectively.   Is he really saying that is acceptable!!!!

Quote,

My take on the past season is that following a fair start in March (though with some smaller than average 3SWs) there was a bit of a gap before the main run of 2SWs arrived in May. Extra water shifted many of them well upstream (one was caught in the first beat below Elan!) and when flows dropped back, we should have expected good catches in June. Instead, the slight greening of the water that started in early May turned into a full algal bloom at the start of the third week. This terminated the catching of fish instantly. There were four algal blooms in all one extending downstream from the Ithon. The water here at Llanstephan was bright green - something I have never seen before. When a small thunderstorm caused levels to rise below Monmouth, the regulation flows were switched off in show week leading to some juvenile fish being stranded. Temperatures in the pools cut off from the main river reached 81F and when levels resumed the whole river temperature rose. We were lucky there was no major fish kill but the prospect of catching anything was significantly reduced.

No proper spate arrived until after the season closed. So I felt the numbers caught did not fully represent the size salmon stock. Charlie rightly points out that the lower beat catches were reduced the most. Their best time was curtailed by this bloom while upstream many beats did acceptably in the circumstances. NK

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