River Wye barbel adventure

I had been guiding on the river Wye this this year. It’s not been easy as the rainfall in Wales has been insignificant since late June. The river has had plenty of brown algae which has made fishing difficult.

Andy (you should have been here yesterday) Cowley has taken a few people on the Wye a couple of times and sure enough they have caught some good fish, however none of the big bags yet. The Wye fishes it’s nuts off in flooded conditions during the summer and autumn.

The cost of a days fishing with the Wye and Usk foundation is getting really expensive now a days. £3 for a booking fee and £22 pounds plus for an angler each day is bordering on very expensive. So that’s £25.50 for a days fishing before you think about fuel, bait and tackle costs. I think it makes much more sense to look at joining local clubs. For the price of 3 day tickets you can fish as often as you like. I know the Wye and Usk Foundation cater for the visiting angler but the cost is still far too high in my opinion.

I decided to have half a days fishing on there to try out a few rigs. Basically I wanted to test out some coated braid hook links that I’m going to use on the river Trent later this year. It’s all about confidence in using these rigs. You can read all you like but nothing beats your own experience. It’s a club water I was fishing and a very long walk from the car. It means though that few anglers fish the area because of this.

I have put together a short video of how things went.