Country House weekend with fishing

It is surprising how many of our guests want to include a fishing expedition in their stay with us whether they are B & B guests or a family group taking our Manor House and also many of our self-catering guests in our cottages are keen fishermen as well.

There are plenty of choices near Tall John’s House for both fly fishing and coarse fishing but the outstanding river is of course the Wye – the Welsh one – there are several others!

The mighty River Wye is the fifth longest in the UK (over 150 miles) and has been voted the nation’s favourite river in the past. It rises at almost 700m above sea level in the remote Cambrian Mountains. From there it journeys down just entering the National Park around Hay-on-Wye before flowing on and into the Severn Estuary at Chepstow.

The Wye is famed for its salmon. They swim thousands of miles across the Atlantic to spawn in the Wye. They make nests (called redds) in the gravel to lay their eggs and the males defend their territory. Small young male salmon are called ‘parr’ and they live in freshwater for up to six years before changing into ‘smolts’. They swim downstream to the sea in spring.

The Wye was once considered to be one of the finest salmon rivers in the country and at its peak, rod catches of salmon exceeded 7,000 a year. The salmon’s decline in the Wye has been dramatic. In 2010 rod catches for the whole river were a mere 451. Today the Wye and Usk Foundation works to conserve, protect, rehabilitate and improve the salmon and other indigenous species of animal and plant life of the rivers Wye and Usk and their tributaries.

An easy way to get a day ticket to fish is through The Fishing Passport.

And once you have caught your elusive salmon, opinion is divided on how you should eat it. My money is on cold with home-made mayonnaise and a green salad with new potatoes but a close runner-up is hot with hollandaise sauce. The tricky thing is catching the salmon in the first place!