Some fantastic reports guys. Dave, I particularly like this sentence from your quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tigermoth
His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.
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I think most of us can relate to that!
Well, this was my first time on the Monnow Social and it certainly won't be my last. It was a fantastic weekend spent in glorious surroundings with a great bunch of guys. Really enjoyed catching up with those I knew already, and making acquaintances with everyone else. Oh, and the fishing wasn't too bad either!
Saturday was spent on a lovely private beat of the main stem with Toby (std). The day started well with three fish taking a dry mayfly dun quite quickly (many thanks Rob for lending me the magic fly). Soon after Rob left the fishing slowed down with only the odd sporadic rising fish. After a fruitless couple of hours I decided to wander upstream and find Toby who was enjoying more success than me as I immediately saw him catch a lovely small brownie. It was obvious that Toby was fishing the right stretch, there were fish rising everywhere, I really couldn't believe the difference to the stretch I had spent the morning on. Over the next few hours we enjoyed some wonderfly dry fly sport with many fishing coming to hand and possibly an equal number lost! I was chuffed to end the day having caught all my fish on the dry, not something I can say very often. It was very satisfying!
I was feeling a little worse for wear on Sunday after the previous nights antics (and whiskey) but soon perked up when I heard Toby and I would be fishing Skenfrith, a beat I have always wanted to fish and heard many good things about. After being dropped off by Patrick, Toby and I admired the stretch from the bridge. I spent a little while taking it all in, the lovely old pub, the bucolic surroundings and of course the river, it was really stunning. We walked down to the lower end and despite not seeing any rising fish the whole beat looked very appealing. Once we were tackled up Toby worked his magic on the fish again and immediately fish started rising under the trees. Toby did brilliantly quickly taking three fish whilst I endured a more frustrating period rising and missing/losing a couple. After that inital purple patch the fish seemed to go off the boil and Toby made the wise choice to end on a high and call it a day. I still wanted to get to know the beat so spent the rest of the day switching between dry and nymph attempting to tempt some tricky fish. Although the fishing was noticably harder than earlier in the day, I think I caught around 5 wbt. My final fish was particularly satisfying - spotted him rising on the far bank under the trees and eventually after casting nearer and nearer to the bank itself he eventually took. After a strong fight I netted my best fish of the weekend - a somewhat lean 14.5inch (estimated) brownie, fantastic. A few OOS Grayling also made an appearance during the day including what I thought at first was a Chub (I had spotted one large one earlier on) but then morphed into a very large, resplendent Grayling. Based on the length of my net it was around 16 inches long. I'll be back for him in a couple of months time!
It was a terrific weekend. Many thanks to those that organised everything and the kitchen guys who cooked up a real meat feast! Looking forward to next year already.
Re: Monnow Social 2011
its runs like a well oiled machine 
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