Angling Escapades with Dave Roberts

16/06/2026

15/06/2026

Most anglers give their gear a power wash at the end of the season. We do ours just before the start.
A much more pleasurable job in the summer sunshine.

We don’t conform! 😂

14/06/2026

I’ve seen with alarming regularity the amount of people referring to the river in a summer spate colour as ‘Horrible’ and clearly believing that it’s due to some sort of pollution or algae.

Quite simply, with long, dry, hot spells, the river banks become a dust bowl, and when the weather breaks with substantial rainfall, all that dust washes in creating that Wye Valley reddish clay look, that we’ve seen this week.

As the sediment drops, the river slowly clears, and without further rainfall will return to a natural clarity.

We know the problems with sewer discharge, algal activity on the lower river at times of drought/heat, as well as excessive soil run off from exposure, but the current colour in the river is exactly what we should see at this time of year.

Unfortunately we’ve allowed people from outside of the Wye Valley to convince many within, that any colour in the water, is nothing but sinister.

With the start of the coarse fishing season on rivers this week, anglers will be delighted to see some colour and flow in the River Wye.
Aside from dust washing in, the higher water levels reaching Bankside vegetation wash all manner of bug life into the river, delivering a feast from natures larder!

As much as I like watching river life in clear water, the constant, (and most recently record) summer droughts, exposing parts of the river bed never seen before, are as damaging as anything right now.
I’d happily see a red river every few weeks throughout the summer months!

13/06/2026

Things are looking good for the start of the Coarse fishing season!

11/06/2026

Someone who’s clearly not spent any time in the Wye Valley giving it a poultry themed funeral!

When challenged, name drops his famous Angling Times columnist brother, who incidentally regularly uses the Wye fishing trips, for his column content! 🤷🏻‍♂️

You couldn't make it up, the farmer who put up a video of himself cutting silage in the prime nesting season, yesterday put out another video blaming Badgers for the decline in ground nesting birds, bumblebees, hedgehogs etc.
What these farmers fail to recognise is it is not just the farmers poster boy victims that are decline, but virtually all of our wildlife.
Pied flycatchers down, Spotted flycatchers down, House and Tree sparrows down, Swallows, Swifts and House martins down, even foxes numbers are down. Are we to assume Badgers are responsible for all this and more. Of course not, it's down to loss of habitat, the cutting to within an inch of its life of hedgerows. Washing the countryside in insecticides and weedkiller. Earlier and earlier silage cutting.
And what about the ecosystem that is the river Wye, virtually killed off by intensive chicken farming, what was once a prolific salmon river, now on the verge of extinction. The evidence is all there if you spend a minute researching it.
I'm accused of attacking farmers quite often, but in fact, I just respond to the bu****it that some farmers put out as "fact". I know many good farmers are as pi**ed off with this constant attack on our wildlife as I am, casting a shadow over their industry. It's telling how toxic some in the farming industry can be, every farmer who contacts me with information wants to remain anonymous and you just have to look at the pathetic level of trolling some of my posts get.

30/05/2026

Tell me you’ve just come from the river, without telling me you’ve just come from the river!

29/05/2026

I’ve been taking the girls swimming and paddling in the River Lugg just as my dad did with me, but whilst they’re enjoying themselves, I’ve loved turning stones and having a proper root around.
I wish I’d done more of this as a kid too!

Monty enjoyed a bit of hydrotherapy rehab!

26/05/2026

I was surprised to see this story raising its head again.

Whatever the circumstances or outcome, it was done and dusted a long time ago.
John Price went to prison. Whether rightly or wrongly, I don’t really have a strong view, but putting a Bulldozer on the riverbed was foolish at best.

What I do know is, the river in that area is full of life and if you didn’t know the story, wouldn’t look twice at the unremarkable river banks.

So Why revisit it now? And why post a film that was clearly made earlier in the year. The cynic in me, (having having seen some of the antics surrounding the Wye in recent times), tells me there’s something brewing. Someone needs this to be a disaster story, back in the public domain at this time.

I’m sure something will crop up soon, but for the meantime a couple of observations.

The ecologist states they should be seeing rising fish. Well I can assure him that you will if you go now the sun is shining, but when this was filmed, a woolly hat was required, so it’s unlikely you’d see and fish rising as there’d be little or no hatch life.

And secondly, I like to get in the river and turn stones over to see what lies beneath.
Pointing at the river doesn’t really tell you much.

It will be interesting to see what (or who) is driving this new push. 🤔

26/05/2026

There’s not another river species that carries life like ranunculus!