After years of scarcity we are now seeing salmon all over the place on the Wye. July has seen Courtfield absolutely full of fish. I estimate there was between 60 and 100 fish spread through the beat with good sightings of many grilse as well. I caught a 9lb small summer fish in Legg meadow on the 16th before the river rose and a fish of 10lbs was caught by a salmon rod on the 25th. A good fish leaped clear of the water above the Wyebank crib yesterday while a likely small grilse was lost the day before and very small grilse have been showing along the bottom end of the Wyebank stretch. Our catch of salmon has now risen to a respectable 7 and 1 kelt for Courtfield and Wyebank.
Its early days but I for one feel confident that we are on the cusp of a major turn around, particularly with the evidence of the super small grilse which hopefully will be followed now by grilse of increasing size more typical of the late summer Wye fish.
What a month it has been for the Wyebank barbel! While the upper lower Wye and middle river was difficult for salmon and sometimes slow for coarse fishing, the Wyebank stretch was absolutely magnificent. Around 230 barbel were caught by 22 fishermen, with weights ranging from less than a pound up to almost 10lbs with several fish breaking tackle and suspected of being in double figures. The quality of the fish has been superb and every year class is being represented in the catches demonstrating a very healthy population.
That staple of the Wye, the humble chub, has become less desirable for the fishermen. However along with the barbel the Wyebank stretch has produced at least half the above number of chub to magnificent 5 pounders and plenty of 4 pounders. All in all a truly memorable month of fishing with smiles all round.
The Courtfield beat has also seen some stunning catches this month with Kraig Mcleod’s bag including 5 and 6lb chub and two 12lb and an 11lb barbel, Rudi’s 10 and 11lb barbel, while others have had chub pbs of over 6llbs and lots of good barbel. Alan Andrews bag on Wednesday 27th of 10 barbel all around 8lbs and a huge bag of chub to 4lbs plus and Tom Woollerton’s party of which two had 20 barbel, just shows the sort of coarse fishing Courtfield is famous for.
Its official from the WUF that Wyebank and Courtfield have been the best producing coarse fisheries on the river.