Looks like the heat is not detering everyone.

3 fish from Bigswier to Ed Brown and Paul Cook on fly  8/12lbs

31" fish for Jonathon Graves at Coedithel.  Spinning.

Lot of fish at Bigswier apparently and they are now on 150.  Brian James reports four fish on small flies from llandogo 14-12-10 and 8lbs.


Someone took me to task yesterday for hinting the WUF press release was less than honest in its choice of data.  |He asked me what sort of press release would I have put out.  Well to be perfectly honest it went something like this;
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Wye anglers are enjoying better sport this season with 400 spring fish by the end of may the best for many years.

Many of the fish were the big 3sw fish which the Wye has always been famous  and a good proportion of fish in the low to mid twenties have been landed including one estimated at 35lbs.

This against a backdrop of last years catch of just 590 which was one of the poorest half dozen of Wye seasons since the turn of the century.  Wye rod catches were as high as 7800 in the 70s and regularly topped 5,000, this despite netting, very active poaching and considerable catches by the putcher ranks. Spring catches were as high as 1,000 by the end of March alone in some years.

   In the 80s and nineties catches to fall away and in 1996 the catch that season was just 1838.

In that year the Wye Foundation was formed to try and halt the decline in catches. They embarked on  widescale habitat work to try and reverse things. This included fencing and coppicing feeder streams,  barrier removal and the improvement in acidification on some of the upper river. The putcher rank was bought out using cash raised from anglers and owners, although it still does operate though on a limited basis.   A huge sum has been spent over the years with estimates up to £12million pounds. The Foundation now has 26 full time staff and a wage bill of well over £500,000.

Despite all this work catches have been slow to recover and have never approached the 1838 catch of 1996 when they first started.  This years catch looks likely to exceed over a thousand fish for the third time in the last 10 years  and follow the usual up and down sequence of Wye rod catch returns which can vary wildly.  In 1976 for instance 5182 were caught followed by just 2096 the following year. The last really good year was in 1988 with a catch of 6401

There seems little scientific evidence so far  that this work by WUF has solved the river Wye problem and the river is still assessed as ‘at risk’ by the NRW.  Nor to does the 100% catch and release policy seem to be having much identifiable affect., as indeed on other rivers.

Many other spring rivers in Britain and North America, but by no means all, have seen improved runs of fish this spring and many scientists put this down to improved sea survival last year  which overall is thought to be much lower than it was many years ago and could be responsible for the regular highs and lows of catch returns.

However this year,s early returns were encouraging and some of the new Wye anglers are catching just a small glimpse of what this river used, and hopefully still,  could produce.  The jury is out at present for most however and any perceived improvement needs to be maintained and increased considerably and any evidence that the  work done is having any effect would be helpful if not essential.