Wow, what a day. I fished a new beat to me on the Usk today.
It was day that that promised much and then delivered. Its always nice when that happens.

I arrived at the beat early and decided to walk its whole 1 1/2 miles to get a bit of a game plan going.
The morning was still a little misty but with the expectation of a fabulous spring day. Halfway through my recce I met up with another angler who was to be my occasional companion for the day, she also takes a mean photograph. After an introductory chat with Banu I discover she was fairly new to fly fishing and very new to river fishing. I offered a little help to get her started and then finished my sojourn down to the bottom of the beat.
With not much fly life present I set up two rods, hedging my bets a little. The first a 9ft #4 with a dark olive klinkhammer and dark olive GRHE nymph (called Brian) and the second was a 10ft #3 waiting in readyness for the days crop of large dark olives and a bit of near surface sport.

It was an hour or two before the first fish came to hand but the wait was worth it as it turned out to be the trout that ate all the pies, or is that flies? Probably both by the look of the things tummy.

The trout that ate alll the flies , pies and everything else.

So the fishing continued as I waited for the days crop of large dark olives to show up, but they never did. In fact the only fly life I saw all day was 2 March browns and a LDO plus a few stoneflies even in the beautiful spring sunshine. My theory is that the first fish I caught had already eaten them all.

The second fish was a real beaut, I just spotted it making a slight and oily rise on the far side of the neck of a pool. At this point I was accompanied by my sometime companion for the day Banu.

Banu had a coupe of casts but it was in a tricky spot with the fast current rushing between us and the fish, Banu keen to see the fish caught offered me a chance to have a crack. So picking up my 9 ft I gave it a couple of casts, on about the second or third cast I got the mend just right and was rewarded by the Klink disappearing very quickly. I was inclined to type savagely but am not sure if something can disappear savagely?

Thanks Banu and what a great picture!

Cracking Usk Brown Trout

With the absence of the mid day hatch I was expecting I retired to the pavilion for lunch, well the Pajero rather than the pavilion. There was only one more fish to the net for the day and it came from a deep slow pool right at the bottom of the beat. Again falling to the GRHE Nymph that had been swinging about underneath my klink in a most effective manner all day.

Here is a nice sequence of shots showing the capture and return of the last fish of the day.

On the way to the net.

Nice brownie in the net

And its safe return to where itcame from.

Thanks for reading

Frank Williams