April 2023 Catch report

Fly Fishing

Local reservoirs such as Ynys y Fro are fishing well, lots of customers reporting good bags of trout to lure and buzzers. These are quality fish and pull like rockets!

Wild brown trout lakes are also fishing well, such as Cantref, Beacons and Tal y bont in the Brecon Beacons, here teams of wet fly and small black coloured lures have scored well. Come into store and we can recomend killer patterns for this time of year!

Local rivers such as the Taff have been very high, however the upper reaches have produced good fish above Treharris through to Merthyr.  The Ebbw has been fishing well, with our customers Sparky, Kyle and Luke all catching good numbers Euro Nymph fishing. We have kits avaiable should you wish to try this method, which is really easy to pick up.

Small streams have been worth a go as well in the higher water conditions, these are often really good when almost at flood level. A few examples below from streams on the Fishing Passport, fish up to 2lb 12oz can be caught with a cautious approach. 

Below: Some of Ceri's recent captures on the local Welsh rivers.

Once again, The fishing in Wales team have been busy creating some fantastic content as of late. In the video below, watch Hwyel Morgan on the Teifi pools, rugged wild Mountain Lakes of Mid-Wales where native brown trout rule. Hwyel takes on the 'Teifi pools slam' challenge; To catch a fish from each lake. 

Click the image below to find out if he succeeds!

Carp & Coarse Fishing

Our dispatch manager Ryan has been putting a lot of time into some of his local waters on the Glamorgan Anglers club ticket. After the new Drennan Circle hooks arrived with us in store, he decided to go and try out a few different sizes on his day off. With the fish on the feed throughout the day, this 2lb 6oz crucian carp was certainly the highlight of the session.

Every so often Wales' biggest Carp ‘Ebenezer’ makes an appearance on the bank. This time round, it was the Jamie Watts who was rewarded for his long hours on the Syndicate, landing the queen of the dock at 45lb.

April is often a popular time of year for our clients to head over to France in search of some mega carp. Josh Richards headed over for his first trip with his Son, with the location being Lac Luna set in the country side of the Picardie region. The smiles say it all, with this stunning carp hitting the bank within the first 24 hours!

David Sean-Robbins has been putting plenty of hours into his carp fishing this year, spreading his time between The Wharf Fishery and his local Pentwyn lake. After popping into our Cardiff store to stock up on end tackle, David headed down to the Wharf and he was kind enough to update us on his session with the following write up:

"So I finished work earlier than expected so thought I’d pop down to the lake for a few hours as it was a lovely day, once arriving at the lake a mate has just landed an upper 20 and needed pics taken, so I popped round to take a few snaps and as we was looking at the carp in the net his right hand rod screamed off and nearly ended up the the lake but luckily my go go gadget arms saved the rod and he landed another high double, so once we got all the snaps done he said “your going to have a banger for saving my rod”…… so I walks off to my peg gets the zigs out and just didn’t feel confident, so I switched to a 10mm pink pop up on a spinner rig size 4 curve….. and within 5 mins the left rod had couple of beeps then went into complete meltdown, 15 minute battle and up popped this beauty."

Sea Fishing

Amongst one of the most popular South Wales venues is Monknash beach. Despite the long walk to the venue, the rewards are often well worth it. Due to the shallow gradient of the beach, the majority of anglers that have fished the beach regularly believe that it's a beach that fishes better during the night as opposed to the day time, with plenty of rays and bass being caught at this time of year.

With this being said, our store manager Rich was keen to make the most of a sunny day off, so headed down to Monknash beach for a mid day tide. Stocked up with sand eel, squid and bluey baits baited up on pulley pennel rigs, Rich and his friend Eugene were able to find a few nice fish during their session. Rich picked up some dogfish and this nice Turbot, whilst Eugene landed this nice spotted ray.

Regular customer and TronixPro brand ambassador Mario Asprou has built up a reputation for being a very accomplished all round angler, with a love for targeting species across numerous angling disciplines. However, Sea fishing is where Mario is happiest, whether it be fishing local marks along the South Wales coast or guided trips for Sharks in South Africa.

Take a look at this huge PB Conger eel Mario recently landed, tipping the scales at a whopping 32lb!

In addition to his recent success on the conger eels, Mario also released a new video on his YouTube channel, where he targets cod at Llantwit Major cliff.

Typically the cod fishing tends to die off throughout April and into may, but it has been great to see some pristine spring cod still being caught from both the shore and on the boats, as seen in Mario's video above and in the pictures below. It is common to find that a lot of codling caught at this time of year are caught whilst targeting other species such as blonde rays, congers or bass.

Pictured below (right) is Sakuma consultant Steve Tucker with a nice codling from the Welsh side of the Bristol Channel. This codling was taken on a peeler crab bait, mounted on a Sakuma 560 Stinger hook. 

The charter boats have also been producing some nice cod, mainly taken on worm or squid and sand eel baits, just like the one caught by Steve Shaw pictured below (left).

In addition, Hunter and his father David also managed to find the spring cod when they headed out for a few hours on Cardiff Barrage in order to try out their new TronixPro Banzai Rods. The lads were rewarded for their efforts with a 4lb cod, which isn't a bad way to christen their new gear! The Banzai range offers fantastic value for money, with a range of multiplier, fixed spool, bass and mullet rods available and now in stock on our website and in store.

Spinning &Lure Fishing

It appears the lure fishing along the Pembrokeshire coast starting to take off, with reports of bass, Pollack and wrasse being caught on both lures and baits. 

Catch and Cook Kayak fishing guide Joe Shaw had an action packed lure session at St Davids, landing 6 Pollack up to 5lb as well as a lovely bass which was dropped at the waters edge, estimated at around 6/7lb.  A variety of soft plastic lures were doing the damage in a variety of patterns, however the 40g chartreuse proved to be the most effective .

There have been lot's of pike coming out from Waters across South Wales, with some quality fish well in to double figures nailing the lures! 

Shaun Harrington swapped his 3 rod carp set up for a few hours at Cardiff Bay with his LRF set up which he recently picked up from our Cardiff store. Over 200  ha in size and serving the river mouths for both the River Taff and the River Ely, Cardiff Bay provides a huge range of wildlife including some spectacular fish. Many lure anglers just like Shaun fish the Bay throughout the year in search of specimen perch, pike, mullet and even Bass. Although Perch were the target species, Shaun was lucky enough to hook into one of the Bay's big Pike. After a good scrap on light braid, a 2000 size reel and a 1-10g rod Shaun came out on top with this stunning croc weighing in as a new PB of 17lb.

Llangorse Lake in the Brecon Beacons has also been producing some quality pike recently. One of our keen lure fishing customers Stuart had a day to remember on the boat. He  found that most of his luck came on larger lures such as the Miuras Mouse and the limited edition Salmo slider 16.

We hope you enjoyed reading this months review, for a chance to be featured in next months catch report, feel free to send in your catch reports with a brief description to our email or in the comments section for this blog. Make sure to keep yourself up to date on our social media platforms for daily content.

For tips and advice, feel free to get in touch and we will be more than happy to help!