A day of two halves

With the game fishing around here still in the doldrums I decided to get out the coarse rods again and try a couple of venues in south county Sligo. Firstly I planned to give Finlough one more go, mainly on the back of word from a fellow angler that there were tench in that wee lake. Last night was far from restful for me with pain in my chest and shoulder keeping me awake for most of the night, so it was a somewhat bedraggled Claretbumbler who hit the road well before the school run traffic. The day, though dull, was unusually free from that horrible wind which feels like it has been blowing all year so far. Sure enough, when the lough hove into view it was lovely and calm with just a few ducks fussing about to disturb the surface. Once parked, I set up at a leisurely pace, raking a a swim and adding four balls of ground bait. Lots of small rudd were topping but I didn’t pay them much heed.

My usual set up of an 11 foot float rod and a similar sized feeder would be good enough for what I expected to encounter. Unlike my last outing, I was better prepared and had not only maggots for bait but also some bread. For ground bait, I brought half a bag of Sensas 3000, some garlic flavoured hemp, crushed oats and crumb to bulk it up a bit. Maybe more importantly, my mindset was very different from my last outing and I wanted to push myself to make a good catch. I tend to get lazy when coarse fishing and settle back into just watching the float without making any changes when it goes quiet. It was time to up my game a notch or two.

I am guilty of not providing much in the way of detail when describing my fishing here on this pages of this blog so let me change that and go into the nitty gritty of the end tackle I used. Let’s start with the float rod. I had 6 pound mono on the reel, my thinking being if I hooked a tench I would be able to land it on the heavy line. A small waggler, positioned with two small stops, was weighted with small shot immediately above the loop. At the business end I tied a loop-to-loop connection to six inches of four pound double strength nylon ending with a size 14 barbless hook. After much experimenting this is my ‘normal’ set up for the loughs I fish. I go lighter when there are just silvers around or conditions are tough, or very occasionally I go up to 8 pound mainline on waters where I know there are big fish.

Moving on to the feeder rod, I kept this simple. As so often, I used a twizzle boom and I passed the main line through the swivel on the boom, threaded on a small black plastic bead then tied a loop-to-loop connection to a 20 gram maggot feeder. On the end of the boom I used another loop-to-loop on 5 inches of 6 pound mono, ending in a size 12 mini barb hook. Neither set up was particularly high tech nor was it complex. I like to keep my fishing as simple as possible!

I do mess around with my feeder set up quite a bit, depending on venue, local conditions, target species or experience on the water I am on. It feels like each time I think I have found a winning formula for setting up the feeder it fails spectacularly the next time I try it, so that no doubt contributes to my near constant chopping and changing of rigs.

Off into the middle of the lake sailed the feeder, quickly followed by the float rod. The first cast saw the float rise and I struck into a tiny rudd, soon followed by another, then another…………….. Every cast was the same, the float most time did not even get a chance to cock before a three inch rudd took the falling maggots. A couple of perch muscled in on the act but apart from them it was wall to wall miniscule rudd. I had a few small rudd on my last trip here but nothing like the nonsense of this session. I wound in the float rod, took everything apart and set up again, this time with a much bigger hook, the size 14 coming off and replaced with a size 6. It is amazing just how many maggots you can squeeze on a meathook like a size 6. That change certainly stopped the little rudd from biting but it did nothing to encourage lager fish to bite. By 10.30 I had enough and packed the gear away in the old Toyota. Well that was a bit of a disappointment but all was not lost, just a few miles down the road there was another spot for me to try.

My second venue for the day was a new one for me. The Owenmore River flows through Templemore lake and joins up with the Owenboy to form the Ballysadare River. While the Ballysadare is a salmon river of note, the Owenmore is a coarse fishery, famed for its shoals of bream. There is good access at Templemore bridge, so I was heading over to give the slow flowing waters of that stream a try.

I am still learning the dark arts of coarse fishing on rivers. I avidly consume books, podcasts and videos on the subject but don’t reach anything like the level of success those other anglers achieve on running water. Some of that is species related as we don’t have dace, chub, barbel, carp or gudgeon here in Ireland, all fish which seem to be staples of the English river scene. Roach and perch are the main inhabitants of rivers here with bream in slow stretches. Some day I’d love to spend some time in England sampling the coarse fishing there and try to catch chub and barbel, but for now I have to build up my knowledge on the rivers on this side of the Irish Sea.

Rather than lugging more gear with me, I had decided to just use the same rods and reels on the river that had served me well on the lough that morning. I knew full well that I was cutting corners here and that I had much more suitable rods lying at home, but I thought I would chance using the lighter weapons this time. My bream fishing is rarely successful so the chances were I would blank or just catch a few skimmers, fish that my light eleven footers could handle. That was the plan anyway.

I found the spot easily enough and the rough carpark was perfect, situated as it is just one field from the edge of the river. Minutes after I had pulled up I was surveying my new surroundings. The river, flowing from left to right, had created a huge pool with little discernible flow. Selecting a gap in the reeds where other anglers had obviously been fishing, I hurled out the feeder first then set up the float. The feeder gave a rattle and in came a small hybrid, a very welcome start to any session.

The water was deep, about ten feet close in and a good bit more further out. With only the eleven footer available to me I decided to feed the margin and try to pull any fish to me, so I threw in groundbait balls and loose fed maggots fright from the start. Sure enough, the float gave a rattle and I was into another hybrid, this one a good bigger than the last. I have a soft spot for hybrids, they are willing to put up a bit of a scrap when hooked. The flow through the pool was gentle and the bottom appeared to be fairly even in front of me, so once I had the depth plumbed there was not much else to do but strike whenever the float dipped. All the time i was hoping for bream the size of paving slabs to show up but alas the big lads stayed out of sight. Not to worry, there were plenty of small fish to keep me busy.

It was all go for nearly two hours then the shoal must have drifted off. In that time I landed a big number of hybrids but of course I failed to keep count. It doesn’t concern me that I know not the number or weight of my morning on the lovely banks of the Owenmore. Such details are of no consequence, the fresh air and frequently bent rod was all I cared about. By early afternoon the wind was getting up and a shower freshened the air. With chores to be done at home I packed up and tramped over the newly mown grassy field to the waiting car and the road to Mayo.

I am sure I’ll return to this spot again but the next time I will take longer rods for both float and feeder. My 13 foot float rod will hande the deeper water better and the same goes for my long feeder. The big pool absolutely screamed ‘PIKE’ to me, so a deadbait rod could well be packed in the car for the next trip too. Indeed, with a flat open field behind me it is quite feasible to fly fish for pike there, a branch of the sport I am currently reading up on. I’ve landed plenty of pike on the fly of course, but I want to improve my understanding of the details of the sport and enjoy this popular method more in the the future. Virtually every lough around these parts holds a few pike so it makes sense for me to invest some time and effort in catching them.

Here we are at mid-summer already, where has the year gone? Time is passing at a frightening speed and from now on the days will begin to shorten. I thought that by now I would have spend a lot of my free time angling but circumstances have conspired against me at every turn. The scant few hours I fished today were a tonic after a run of tough weeks. I find I lose myself when fishing, the troubles of modern life fall away as I fiddle with floats or flies, drift along under marbled skies or huddle beneath a brolly. With the house now on the market there will be more change to come this year but I have plenty of time off now I am semi-retired. Time for more sessions like today’s on the big pool amongst the trees on the Ownemore river I hope.