January 2024 Catch Report

January is often a hard month for anglers all over the UK due to the challenging conditions, however the fishing has been surprisingly good with plenty of sea fishing reports from both the beach and boats, as well as some cracking fresh water catch reports from our still waters and river anglers alike.

Fly Fishing

Garry Evans & Fishing in Wales employee Ceri Thomas has been catching some stunning grayling as of late, roaming the urban rivers of South Wales in his Kinetic X5 waders! Amongst a selection of colours and patterns, the immaculate 45cm fish pictured below fell for a pink shrimp fly from Dragon / Grando.

Ceri also fished the ‘Welsh Grayling Cup’ weekend on the river Rhymney, where after a close contest between 16 teams of 2 anglers Ceri's ‘Grayling Grapplers’ achieved 7th place. A few images below of Ceri with a 45cm grayling caught during the comp, with his team mate Lyn Davies with a 47cm, which was the 2nd biggest fish caught on the weekend. Both fish took shrimp patterns fished under an Air-Lock bung. A more detailed report can be found on the Fishing in Wales site.



 Luke Gater has been breaking up his winter on the Pike with the odd session on his local trout stillwater. he's been enjoying plenty of action on Ynysyfro Resevoir, a Newport Fly Fishing Assocciastion water that consists of two lakes of 16 and 10 acres. In the video below, Luke is enjoying some great sport on his Hardy Ultralite 9' 6" #7 rod, which he has paired up with an Ultradisc reel and Rio Aqualux intermediate fly line.

Foxhill Trout fishery is a new 3 acre still water that has opened up in Camrose, Haverfordwest. This easy access venue is stocked full of rainbow and blue trout up to 15lb, with a number of purpose built platforms available. In the video below, good friend of the shop, fishing guide and author Steffan Jones, spent the day at this new complex in search of a winter rainbow trout.

Carp & Coarse 

With the challenging conditions we have faced recently, our river anglers have been making the most of every window of oppurtunity that appears. Well known presenter and good friend of Garry Evans Will Millard enjoyed a day of filming on the Upper River Wye, with Ceri Thomas and Alan Parfitt from Fishing in Wales. Will said that it was "hard graft in what turned into -3 conditions, but with blue skies overhead, much birdsong, a salmon on her last post-spawn swim and even a huge dog otter, it really was an absolute delighted from start to frozen finish.

This beautiful chub topped off a brilliant day out for Will and was most certainly a welcome catch in such challenging conditions. Will added “it only really takes one good bite to completely transform your fortunes, but i'll save that for Ceri to tell you about in his film from the day.” Keep an eye out for the video which will be launching very soon!

The Taff feeder stream has continued to produce some lovely fish, carrying on it's great run of form in 2024. With the main rivers out of use for large parts of January, the feeder that runs through the heart of Bute Park until Cardiff Castle is in sight provides a fantastic option for a few hours of rod bending action. Our staff member Lloyd Prytherch is a man that knows this water better than most and has proved that during his recent sessions. Using maggots and worms on the stick float, Lloyd has picked up barbel, chub, Perch and plenty more in recent sessions. Due to the shallow & narrow nature of the water, a 3BB stick float is ideal, straight through to a size 16 hook with double maggots. 

Store manager Rich also started the year off with a spot of urban stream fishing. Despite good reports from the feeder stream like Lloyd''s one above, Coxy chose to fish the Roath brook, which flows out from Roath Park lake down towards the heart of Cardiff. Once again, using small stick floats and maggotts for bait there was an abundance of fish caught between rich and his friend Euegene, mainly consisting of small chub. Size certainly doesn't matter in this stream, as even the smallest of fish can provide a fantastic scrap on ultra light gear.

Members of Glamorgan Anglers Club are spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a venue, with 8 lakes and 5 rivers all on included on the same ticket. This means that even in the heart of winter you can find a suitable venue to catch some fish. Rhian Bomber and her son Hunter headed down to Sue's Pond, one of two lakes located in Cadoxton, Barry in search of a few of the lakes bigger carp. During the warmer months of the year these lakes can be proloifc, providing non stop carp action with some quality fish up to 20lb, but as anticapted the plumetting conditions made it more difficult for Hunter and Rhian. But after a while the duo's efforts proved worth it as Hunters ledger rod screamed off, resulting in this chunk of a mirror carp and the first fish of the session. Hunter was using a small white pop up with a small mesh bag filled with ProBaits TT.

With a few fish on the bank, Rhian decided to give herself a bit more of a challenge and see if she could land one off the surface and sure enough she did! After 3 missed takes the common pictured below couldn't resist the bait presented perfectly on the surface. A single piece of bread fished across to the opposite margins did the trick for Rhian.

Danny Curtis' first session back on Caerphilly Moat resulted in this stunning old mirror, which tipped the scales at just shy of 30lb. Situated bang in the middle of town with the awesome backdrop of Caerphilly Castle, this 30 acre lake is home to roughly 300 carp as well as a wide range of coarse species such as Pike, tench, roach and perch. Click on the photo below if you would like to learn more about Caerphilly & District Angling Association and what they have to offer.

Sea Fishing

The Cod fishing along the Bristol channel got off to a flying start to the year in 2024, with stacks of catch reports from both shore and boat anglers. The size of fish being caught was also very promising, with some smaller cod around the 2-3lb all the way up to some stunning double figure fish.

Steve Shaw had some quality Cod whilst on board Tackle Box Charters which operates out of Portishead, with the biggest fish tipping the scales at 11lb.

The Boats have still been producing plenty of big rays, with some cracking blondes,thornbacks and small eyed rays beeing caught. Usually the ray fishing slows down around this time of year, but seeing as the temperatures have been considerably mild they appear to have stuck around in good numbers. 

Shane & Tarrick on “Fish Reaper” have been well amongst the action with stacks of Blondes up to 14lb going out of Cardiff Bay. The guys have also been catching plenty of whiting, dogfish and conger eels to 9lb.

South Wales Sea Anglers had a fantastic turn out for their first competition of 2024 at Burry Port, Carmarthenshire. It can be a superb venue to fish during the winter months with plkenty of fish to be caught such as dogfish, dabs, flounder, plaice, thornback rays, whiting and even weaver fish. Here's what club chairman Rob Cole had to say about the match:

"Making sure everyone was across the two rivers safe we blew the whistle and the boys left for there marks the weather held out for us but it was cold when the sun dropped. There was no diesel left from the recent sunk boat so that was a pluss.

It was fishing really well until the pressure dropped right of the wind changed direction about 1hour 30 before the end of the comp and the cold drizzle came .

1st place with 42points 314cm was Christopher Bugsy Read giving him 20 swsa points .

2nd place with 39points 280cm was Robert Cole giving him 15 swsa points .

3rd place with 38 points 335cm was Lee Williams giving him 10 swsa points

4th place with 37points and 273cm was Gareth Swensson giving him 5 swsa points

All the rest who weighed in gets 2 swsa points.

Junior Harry Lewis had a cracking comp casting retrieving and measuring his fish with his dad Dave them coming down to get them whitenessed buy us, We'll done young man you got 20 swsa junior points.

Biggest Dab pool went to liam Mellor at 34cm £60."

Finishing in 2nd place only behind respect international angler Chris Read, Rob landed an impressive 19 fish with 10 in size including dabs, whiting and flounder. It's great sto see our small dug ragworm was doing the business, baited on size 4 Kamasan B940's on 3 hook traces. Rob managed to get some awesome pictures for us as well!

The middle of January brought some brutal weather conditions with sub zero temperatures followed by gusting winds in excess of 40mph on certain days. This really made the beach fishing a big challenge as the rays and eels appeared to move off, however we did still receive some nice catch reports even if they were a bit sporadic! 

Armed with a cool box full of our frozen fish baits, Olly Hughes headed out for a few hours of pleasure fishing on Barry Knap and was rewarded with this beautiful blonde Ray! Olly fished for 3 hours up and 2 hours and struck into this lump right on high tide. With the sun shining on a flat calm Bristol Channel, this blonde topped off a very pleasant day on the pebbles.

Cardiff Barrage has been throwing up some nice fish recently, mostly being caught with rag worm or small squid baits. Flounder and whiting have been caught on flapper rigs with size 2 or 4 hooks, just like Martyn Stallard has been using (Pictured below).

If you're looking to get out for a few hours on a mark with easy access, then the barrage is certainly worth a try with Parking close and a nice stable platform to fish from!

When your session is going to plan and the fish aren't on the feed, sometimes you are more than happy to catch anything, sometimes even a dogfish! For our store manager Richard Cox, his session in the tough conditions at Ogmore Deeps provided him with his first rockling. Although it was not the target species, Coxy was intrigued to catch one and see it up close as you can see by the expression on his face in the photo below! These fascinating fish often found hiding under rocks and have been known to survive being stranded at low water by keeping dark and damp which allows them to keep a moist coating in their skin. For lots of anglers rockling are also a popular bait, especially for targeting big predatory species such as conger eels.

In an ever so slighty warmer climate, our good friend Jake Jones has been on the sandy beaches of Australia. You will usually find Jake further on in our blogs in the Spinning and lure fishing section as that is his favourite approach, but he finally decided to dust off the beach rods and headed out with some deadbaits and big circle hooks. A  short evening session resulted in this awesome hammerhead shark. It's great to see his TronixPro Cobra GT rod and his trusty Penn Spinfisher 7500LC reel were up to the task!

Spinning & Lure Fishing

The lure fishing appears to have strarted off rather slowly this year, with constantly changing levels and clarity making it hard for our pike and perch anglers to fish in the desired conditions. With that being said, the salt water lure fishing has been very good this January with a range of species being caught, mainly along the Pembrokeshire coast.

Both Lloyd's from Garry Evans joined Joe Shaw from Catch & Cook Kayak fishing for an action packed session on the rocky coastline of North Pembrokeshire. Using a selection of lures which consisted mainly of metal lures and jigs, pollock were on the feed throughout the day across a handful of marks, with the occassional bass showing up as well. The HTO Yo Yo jigs are an ideal lure for fishing on a slow retrieve in deep water, where lots of fish are holding up at this time of year.

Ceri from Fishing in Wales joined us to do some filming on the day and you can now watch the full video below. For a more in depth report on the two Lloyds session down West, you can now read the full blog which is packed full of hints, tips and tackle advice for lure fishing during the winter.

One of our die hard lure anglers Lee Harrison has also been scaling the rocky marks of pembrokeshire in search of a range of different species. He has picked up some nice bass along with some pollock too, but he has also landed some stunning coalfish which were an added bonus species during his sessions!

We hope you enjoyed reading our first review of 2024, 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, don't hesitate to get in touch and we will be more than happy to help!