Monday October 12th 2026.

Yesterday saw the eagerly anticipated first match of the2026/2027 Van Den Eynde River Wye Winter league take place across the Belmont and Tennis Courts sections of the river. There were some new teams and new signings across the teams and plenty of friendly rivalry between the 72 anglers taking part. Following some much needed rain in Wales on Friday, the river rose from 0.19m on Saturday morning to around 0.8m during the afternoon before dropping off to around 0.5m at the start of the match. Due to the relatively mild conditions for the time of year, the river had not fully switched to Autumn mode with the annual migration of fish into the deeper waters of Belmont still in progress.

As it turned out, the match fished well throughout the match length with chub, dace, roach perch and bleak making up most of the catches, although the elusive Belmont skimmer bream also put in an appearance. Individual winner on the day was Matt Derry (Woodys) who weighed in a catch of roach and perch from peg 90 to record a weight of 44lb 0oz. Runner up was Chris Hallows (Cwmcelyn Match Group) who was on peg 79. He weighed in a mixed bag including some skimmers for 43lb 4oz. Third place was taken by match organiser Dave Roberts (Woodys) who caught  small dace from the bottom of the Tennis Courts section to weigh in 35lb 14oz.

On the team front, the new look DH Angling came out top on 58 points following some consistantly good section points across five of the six sections. Runners up were Woodys on 54 points who were denied the top spot due to a bad points tally on “D” section. Third place went to Cadence Bait-Tech Superteam with 48 points. A good start to the league with plenty of fish caught throughout. The next match will be on Sunday 18th October when the Alan Reynolds Memorial match takes place on both side of the river from the Pumphouse  downstream. This is followed by the eagerly awaited Individual Wye Championship on Sunday 25th October. Full results from yesterday are below: