The River Wye is surrounded by a more varied countryside than any other British river, starting in the Welsh Mountains and for the next 135 miles it flows through constantly changing scenery of woods and gorges till that gives way to rich farmland as it flows on its way to join the River Severn. In the 1760 edition of Izaak Waltons 'The Complete Angler' (The Sir John Hawkins edition) there is a footnote describing the use of coracles and the different names to describe them in Monmouthshire such as thoracle, truckle, coble and corbola. Another visitor to the river thirty years later W. Coe described coracles covered in pitched canvas and also of pairs being used for netting.

The River Wye is muddy, which is the reason why no Sea Trout venture into it unlike the large Salmon it attracts. Apart from the netting of Salmon, angling with rod and line was much practised but for two different reasons, sport fishing by the more wealthy and as a means of livelihood for the inhabitants living near to the river. A technique to assist the netting was described as 'brushing' where a long pole was used to drive Salmon into the net that was surrounding a hole or boulder that was thought to hide the fish. The design of coracle used on the Wye and Usk resembled the traditional style from the River Tywi (Towy) although an original example in the museum at Hereford has an additional block of wood behind and under the seat also attached to the bulkhead. That coracle belonged to William Dew of Kerne Bridge who was still fishing with a rod and line in the first decade of the twentieth century. He used a reel but there is the unusual description of other rod fishermen who used a line attached to the rod tip with a float known locally as a bung. The technique on hooking a Salmon was to throw the rod over the side and wait till the fish was still before netting it.

A Hereford fishing-tackle dealer in the 1930s owned an original coracle rod and line that had been used on the Wye and described as being shaped like a billiard cue, tapered, short and stiff and about eight feet long. The line was made from horsehair about twenty four feet long and tapering to just three hairs at the hook end. Most of the coracles were used in the area downstream from Hereford and between Ross on Wye and Monmouth, also on the river at Lydbrook there were coracle races as part of the local sports. It has been reported that the Great War (1914-18) was the time after which coracles were not seen on the Wye and also other rivers. An unusual feature of some of the coracles was the rear of the craft behind the seat being longer than the front end. In 1799 an account of a journey down the river by Charles Heath from Ross on Wye to Bristol was recorded in his book 'Excursions down the Wye'.

There is less Information about coracles on the River Usk but an early record from 1586 describes coracles used on Llangors Lake (Llyn Safaddan) in the Usk region. Salmon were also taken on rod and line as well as net caught. It was in the town of Usk that some of the coraclemen lived and it is recorded that their coracles could be seen hanging from cottage doors. Sport anglers outlasted the commercial salmon coraclemen by many years and the last on the River Usk was Thomas Rees who fished every season for forty years. His last coracle (and probably others) was made by Tom O'Neill known as an expert fisherman and coracle maker who it was said lived in a cave on the River Wye between Monmouth and Symond's Yat and had a reputation as a "most inveterate Salmon poacher". Thomas Rees died in 1933 but fishing was still practised occasionally by an angler from Usk Priory on the lower reaches of the river from a Cardigan-built coracle.

The Monnow and Lugg have been described as coracle rivers but there is no evidence to support this and the origin of the claim is unknown but probably began in the 1930s when James Hornell in his 'British Coracles'part two, the Usk and Wye River Systems' chapter wrote about the Monnow and Lugg being the" most important tributaries" but no text to support the heading. A later publication from 1974 'Nets and Coracles' by J.G. Jenkins includes a photograph captioned "Coracles on the Monnow", circa 1900. That picture was thought to be the only surviving evidence of coracle use there until recently when it was disproved and the correct location was identified as being Ross-on-Wye.