Inter-School Competition Winners

Above is a picture of the winners of this years inter-school fishing competition.   Our winners this year are St Aloysius school.  The school won the trophy for the 2nd year in a row, the shield was presented to the school by Tony Rees MBE and the children were presented their trophies by Doug Hawkins Senior Coach and John Coombs the children’s coach on the day. Besides the shield each child received an individual trophy as a memento of the day.

Brecon Canal Run

Pink Salmon – Reporting of catches/sighting

Coarse Competition Redhill Sophies – Result

1st Mark Sweeney 124lbs

2nd Adam Toomey 111lbs 8oz

3rd Jason Woodford 105lbs 15oz

4th Dave Couzens 97lbs

5th Jim Howells 84lbs 8oz

NRW’s proposals for new rod and net fishing byelaws

NRW welcomes the decision announced on 16^th July by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths and the opportunity to move forwards with our shared objectives for sustainable fisheries for the future. The Minister’s decision follows a full public consultation and independent scrutiny of all evidence at a Local Inquiry managed by the Planning Inspectorate.

The new byelaws will become law on all rivers wholly within Wales on 1^st January 2020 and will see the following controls and restrictions implemented: 

• Implementing full catch and release fishing on all net and rod fisheries for salmon
• Requiring catch and release of sea trout in rod fisheries on vulnerable rivers prior to the 1st May
• Setting a 60cm maximum size limit for the taking of sea trout in all rod fisheries
• Implementing method restrictions (controls on use of bait, barbless hooks and treble hooks) so that released fish have the best chance of survival.
• Making consistent the start and end of the net fishing seasons by:
  • Shortening the netting season by starting net fisheries no earlier than 1st May
  • Ending the netting season on the 31^st July

The survival of salmon in some rivers is now threatened, whilst across Wales all of our salmon and most of our sea trout stocks are now at risk of further decline to biologically unsafe levels. All evidence reinforces the need to take bold and urgent action.

NRW will work closely with our stakeholders via our Local Fisheries Groups and the Wales Fisheries Forum during scheduled Autumn meetings (November) to ensure a smooth transition.

We want to ensure that all anglers and netsmen in Wales fully understand why the new measures are required and what they mean to them on all our individual river fisheries. All fishermen need to be compliant, but we also want to help by promoting good practice C&R, ensuring that all released fish have the best possible chance of surviving to spawn and contributing to the recovery of stocks.

The Welsh Government announcement and papers can be found here: –

https://gov.wales/written-statement-outcome-local-inquiry-natural-resources-wales-proposed-all-wales-salmon-and-sea

Carp Competition – 14th July Cyfarthfa Park Lake

Had a great turn out for today’s carp league comp. 12 competitors. 6 seniors and 6 juniors.

Today’s results:

Juniors:

Open Match on Dolygaer Reservoir 22 Jun 19

Match results
Match results

Times for the Match on Brecon Canal Sunday 23rd…

The times of the senior match on the Brecon Canal below the Aqueduct are as follows Draw at 7 am fish 8 am until 1pm

Gary Davies

It is with great pleasure that the Alliance can announce that Gary Davies has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for Services to the Community.  The Chairman and Committee would like to congratulate Gary, this is a well deserved award for all years of tireless hard work he has put in on behalf of the Alliance

Cutting the lilies in front of the grass bank

Whilst the work was continuing on the park walls to make them leak proof, a small work party was convened to trim the lilies in front of the grass bank.  The lilies had spread which made fishing extremely difficult from these pegs.   The Alliance had purchased a specialist cutter which is designed to cut weeds in lakes ponds and rivers and it was put to good use and amazed the guys using it on how efficient it was.  Below is a gallery of the work being carried out.

Release of Water into the River Usk by Welsh…

Richard Allen of Welsh Water has advised us of the following

Due to the declining levels in the river Usk we are now instigating the regulation release from Usk reservoir.

We will be releasing water from the reservoir at a rate of 50 ML/d for regulation purposes. This water will be abstracted at our Prioress Mill pumping station.

Further information from Guy Mawle of the Usk and Wye Abstraction Group……..

This release is smaller than last year’s which was over 80Ml/d and will probably continue for some weeks. It will help support the level of Llandegfedd reservoir is advance of the shut down of pumping at Prioress Mill, Usk this summer while Welsh Water switches from the old to new station to enable them to operate under their new licence. There will still be abstraction by Welsh Water at Llantrisant further downstream.

Love Flows – World Fish Migratory Day

Dear migratory fish friends, We are officially ONE YEAR away from the next World Fish Migration Day! And we already have ONE HUNDRED events! Hooray!!! To celebrate this, we have launched the Love Flows documentary on our YouTube and Facebookchannels! Have you seen it??We are excited for our World Fish Migration Day family to watch this film. We think it provides an educational message about the state of our rivers and fish populations and also gives hope for a future full of migratory fishes. Feel free to share with colleagues, friends, family and host screenings! Actually, at the launch time of 0800 GMT +12, the Department of Conservation New Zealand hosted a live stream screening! We are honoured by your enthusiasm to celebrate with us. Thanks to everyone that helped to make this film possible including the award-winning director, Francisco Campos-Lopez. Without all of your support, we could not be where we are today. We hope this excites you to celebrate World Fish Migration Day again on May 16th, 2020 and look forward to all of the awesome, inspiring events!

Charity Walk along the towpath

On Sunday 19th May if you are fishing the canal be aware that a charity walk will be taking place from the canal basin to Llangatock.  A lot of people could be passing you along the towpath.

Senior Competition Top Pond Sunday 12 May

The result of the match fished on 12 May at Top Pond.

1st Dave Couzens 2lbs 8oz

2nd Jason Woodford 6oz

3rd Jim Howells 4oz

Senior Competitions

Our Comp Sec Doug has been in contact with Jess the Comp Sec of Rhymney Anglers.   This has come about after Jess asked us if we would like a comp against Rhymney on a home and away basis.  This is still to be arranged.  However, in the mean time, Jess has asked if any of our anglers would like to fish with Rhymney they have a competition on Molly’s on Sunday and should you wish to, you may just turn up and fish with them

Senior Coarse Competition

The senior competition held on Sunday 14th April was a complete blank for everyone, even me and Doug won that one as no one caught a fish so everyone was a joint winner!!!!!!

The match fish on Sunday April 28th at Riverside Fishery was won by Dave Couzens with 26lbs 12oz, 2nd was Jim Howells with 17lbs 7oz, 3rd was Steve Llewellyn with 16lbs 12oz, 4th was Jason Woodford with 14lbs 12oz and 5th was Dia (Odd Socks) Davies with 12lbs 10oz.  Our sympathy goes to our Comp Sec Doug who weighed in 3lbs because he had a small hole in his keep net and a lot of the small fish escaped.

Coffer Dam – Cyfarthfa Park

Two pictures below of area behind the coffer dam at peg 1……..

Kemeys Salmon

Marius Macenas fished the Kemeys beat on the Usk yesterday Thursday 11 April and caught a 10lb Salmon on the fly.  See the pictures below, the salmon was returned to the river and swam strongly away.

Young Dan and his first trout