2016 onwards THE FISHING PASSPORT Tel: 01874 712 074 www.fishingpassport.co.uk Over 500km of salmon, sea trout, brown trout, grayling and coarse fishing across Wales and The Marches, along with some of the area’s best still waters. 1 Participating Rivers Front cover photo: Adam Fisher, Angling Dreams 2 Passport Contents The Coarse Angler’s Holy Grail .... 32-34 Biosecurity ........................................36 Features and Information Minimising the Impact of Canoeing ....37 Improving Your Fishing .................. 7-10 Canoeing on the Wye & Usk ..............38 Passport Q&A ...................................11 Canoeing Code of Conduct ................39 Salmon & River Flows ..................14/15 Guiding & Instruction ........................41 Trout & Grayling ...........................16/17 Tregaron Angling Association ............65 New Life for the Taff .................... 20-23 Leaving a Legacy ..............................87 Tenkara ........................................24/25 Sea Trout .....................................26/27 Booking Your Fishing Coarse Fishing .............................28/29 Introduction .................................46/47 Wye ............................................48-51 Usk ..............................................52/53 Severn .........................................58/59 Dee ...................................................60 Loughor ............................................61 Towy & Cothi ...............................62/63 Teifi ...................................................64 Aeron & Arth .....................................66 Taff ...................................................67 Eden & Prysor ...................................68 East & West Cleddau .........................69 Hidden Lakes & Reservoirs ..........70/71 The Wild Streams Introduction .................................72/73 Fly Fishing Small Streams ............74/75 Wye & Usk Wild Stream Map........76/77 The Fishing Passport is produced and distributed by: The Wye & Usk Foundation Unit 4, Talgarth Business Upper Wye, Ithon & Irfon ...................78 Park, Trefecca Rd, Talgarth, Brecon, Powys LD3 0PQ Edw ..................................................79 Registered Charity No. 1080319 Clettwr, Llynfi & Llynfi Dulas ..............81 Tel: 01874 712 074 email: [email protected] Lugg & Arrow ...................................82 www.wyeuskfoundation.org Monnow & Garren .............................83 Severn & Forest of Dean Streams .84/85 Usk Tributaries ..................................86 3 Introduction good on the Wye. The general trend for all types of fishing is upwards and we expect this year to be another great year. What lies behind this is all the work carried out by the Foundation, as well as managing the fisheries themselves. Details of our work can be found on pages 7 to 10 and on our website. We urge all anglers – game and coarse – to read about what is going on to improve the rivers. From restoring access to the tributaries to reducing diffuse pollution, the work benefits all species and we hope that anyone who enjoys fishing these rivers would also take an interest in their restoration and protection. So once again, we really do need your support to keep the momentum of improvement going, build for the future and maintain what we have in what is an gain it’s my very great privilege to increasingly difficult economic time. There are Aintroduce the fourteenth edition of the forms included with this Passport asking you Fishing Passport: an opportunity to welcome to make a regular donation. Your gifts are what new fishers and wish our regulars all the best enable us to improve and maintain these two for 2016. You will see that while our horizons lovely rivers. have got broader, the Passport itself is getting This year marks our 21st year of operation smaller! This is a sign of increasing reliance and we will be celebrating in Hay-on-Wye on the web to supply you with much more with a series of presentations in late May, the up-to-date information and to take bookings week before the festival. These will be setting alongside our manned office. This year we will out what we have achieved so far and how introduce a new, fully comprehensive online with contributions from all the partners and booking system that allows regular updates colleagues who helped to make it possible. and expansion throughout the season and There will also be some presentations on is easier to use for both fishers and for those interesting future projects. Please keep in working at our end. contact with the events page on our website With hindsight, last year proved to be and make sure you are on our e- news something of an oddity: just 18” of rain fell circulation (page12 for details). until mid-November and then almost non- Finally, thank you for all the emails and stop into the New Year. This gave a total of messages of support, your witty feedback 28”, well short of 2014’s 54”! Essentially, 2015 which brightens up our day and for sharing was a very dry year and for the most part a your delight in the rivers, their fish and the good one for coarse and trout fishing (until beautiful Wales and Marches countryside. the drought intervened). It was also good for grayling fishing in the late summer until the With best wishes. wet intervened, bringing that to an end along with the winter pike-ing. Dr Stephen Marsh-Smith OBE Both Usk and Wye produced decent numbers Executive Director, of salmon in 2015 with the spring particularly The Wye & Usk Foundation 4 Chairman’s Appeal Using the Gift Aid form overleaf, or on our website, you can choose to donate now or make a regular gift either to current projects or to our new Endowment Fund (see below for details). Please also consider leaving a gift to the Foundation in your Will (more details on page 87). Please help us to continue to make a difference and become part of our success story. With all good wishes and thanks. Elizabeth Passey Chairman of Trustees, y personal involvement with The The Wye & Usk Foundation MWye and Usk Foundation started in 2001 when I volunteered as a fund-raiser for an area of the Wye catchment with which my family had historical ties. Very quickly, WUF’s Endowment Fund the number and variety of threats facing our rivers and their ecology became apparent. I River restoration work is only possible resolved to do something about it. because we are able to use donations from anglers and others interested The Foundation and partners began tackling in the rivers’ wellbeing as “core these challenges in 1996 and now, against funding” to draw down external funds. a national decline in fish stocks, our rivers However, Government funding for are bucking the trend. Most people with an fisheries is being reduced on both affiliation to the Wye and Usk now agree that sides of the border and we have to they are in recovery mode and everyone who ensure that we are in a position to has supported the work up to now can be access what little is available. very proud of themselves for helping to get this far. Our Trustees have started an Endowment Fund and are appealing But we cannot allow the rivers to slide back to to everyone with an interest in the their former state of neglect. Our vision is for rivers to contribute towards it. The a strong, financially stable and independent income from this fund will guarantee Rivers Trust that can maintain the existing a level of core funding every year work and face up to new challenges and that will enable us to raise the money threats that lie ahead. Without such an needed to support restoration organisation, the Wye and Usk will very soon projects. By helping us achieve a revert to their previous, precarious state. level of financial stability that ensures We need your help to do this and I appeal to the good health of the two rivers, all anglers to support WUF, an organisation your donation to the Endowment with a history and culture of delivering Fund really will make a difference its objectives. I ask that anyone who has to the future of the Wye and Usk. enjoyed the rivers (or knows someone who Contributions can be made by using has) helps us to protect them, not just for the the form overleaf. present but into the future too. 5 6 The Wye & Usk Foundation: working to improve everyone’s fishing. he Passport is only a part of our Salmon and trout have been the major Tdaily activity, though as fishermen beneficiaries although eels too require free ourselves, a very important one! Our main passage up and down rivers. We are glad mission is to restore the fisheries and to say that this species has been enjoying environment of our two rivers, ensuring something of a resurgence in the past few there are enough fish to be caught and years. breed for the future and with that, create new opportunities for anglers. Ultimately, Habitat this boosts the local economy, brings in Our next task was restoring the habitat of future investment and provides jobs for the streams themselves. Heavy grazing local people. Our holistic, whole catchment results in wide and shallow streams along approach brings benefits for all species of with a loss of their tree cover. Our restoration fish, to a wide range of other wildlife and to all comprises double bank fencing, pinning types of angling. Our website gives full details as much hazel and other wood as possible of all the issues we face and the projects that into the stream, and tree management so were designed to tackle them. The emphasis that we end up with a range of species and will always be on restoring river habitats. This varied age structure. For tree cover, we rely is how we do it: on natural regeneration and the key aspect of re- establishing trees is fencing out stock Fish Access animals. These renewed stream corridors Our first action in 1996 was re-opening reduce the amount of silt in the tributaries the tributary system of the upper Wye and and the amount washing downstream into removing as many barriers to migration as the main stem. A cleaner river is better for all possible. We found a staggering number of species.