Messing about at the vice

So I was poking around in a drawer full of feathers and came across a packet containing the breast of a pheasant. I seem to recall buying this two or three years ago but the cellophane wrapping was unopened. The breast feathers are beautifully marked, a mix of dark brown and black barring with creamy coloured tips. In size they could make a good hackle on hook sizes ranging from 10’s up to 6’s, ideal for salmon lough flies. An idea for a Katie variation sprang to mind so I set about messing at the vice for wee while.

Using black tying silk I tied in one of the breast feathers and a black cock hackle then ran the thread down to the bend of a size 6 B175. Here I tied in a short silver tag and a tail made of a golden pheasant topping with a tuft of glo-brite no.4 floss. A rib of oval silver tinsel was caught before I dubbed a black fur body.

Palmering the cock hackle and tying it in with the rib was bog standard but I wanted to add a couple of features. A short beard hackle consisting of some blue dyed guinea fowl was whipped in under the hook then half-a-dozen cock pheasant tail fibres dyed black went on top of the hook. Now I could wind the head hackle, giving it five full turns. I’m pretty happy with the result and pretty confident it will take a salmon or two on Carrowmore this season.

Fishing in Ireland, trolling

Goodbye old friend

Since I bought my shiny new Honda outboard last spring my venerable 9.9 Johnson has lain unused in the shed. With a brand new engine it seemed highly unlikely the old one would ever be used by me again so I decided to sell it. Better someone else getting some good from it than leaving it to rust in a corner.

‘Done Deal’ is an online website here in Ireland where you can sell just about anything as long as it is legal. Up until today I have never used its services but I wrote up an ad and posted it at 3.30pm. Within the hour I had my first call about the engine and the deal was done by 6pm. Hands were shaken and cash changed hands. So the old girl has gone but I feel strangely nostalgic about that old motor.

How do we humans become attached to things like cars and boat engines? It is not rational but never-the-less the memories of days spent out on the lake with the faithful Johnson came flooding back. It was on the back of my boat when I caught first salmon on the troll on Lough Conn all those years ago. The bright silver salmon was the reward for many days trolling and I felt I had earned that one. It snaffled silver Toby pulled across a well know lie and the engine performed faultlessly during all the previous days mooching up and down Conn’s western shoreline.

on lough Corrib

It wasn’t all plain sailing though. There was the day on Lough Mask when Mick and I were out in the deeps beyond the islands when it refused to start after a drift. Pull as hard as I might the damn thing would not start and so, with one oar each, Mick and I pulled and strained all the way back to Cushlough under a blazing sun. It turned out a small linkage had broken but we were not to know that out there in the middle of the lake. My arms ached for days after that incident!

Mask in a flat calm, Shintalla Beag with another boat off the northern tip of the island

The Johnson was a long shift and this could be a blessing or a pain in the rear end. In a big wind when the waves reached 5 or 6 feet in height the Johnson’s propeller stayed under the water at all times, very comforting when driving in such extreme conditions. But the dense weeds on Lough Cullin reach close to the surface and I spent many days constantly pulling up the motor to clear the prop fouled with raft of weeds there. It also meant I had to be very careful, especially on the Mask as it was easy to strike the bottom, as the well chipped propeller testified. I went through three props in my time with that engine, all damaged by the stones on the bottom of Lough Mask. My preference for fishing the shallows was most definitely at odds with the length of the outboard. Please note my new engine is a short shaft model – I may have learned something in my old age.

Ooops!

No more will I sweat and curse the sheer weight of the old white engine while dragging it out of the car and on to the boat. I’ll miss the throaty roar as she sprang into life after a few pulls of the cord (she was always a good starter). That healthy kick as I opened the throttle used to bring a smile to my face, she was nippy enough for one so ancient. The smell of the two stroke oil and the little patch glistening on the surface of the lough when she kicked into life are things of the past now. It is the end of an era for me but in a way I am happy the engine has gone. It was too heavy for me now and the pollution from a two stroke is hard to justify these days. Her time had come and I had to move on. The new Honda shimmers under the light in the shed, basking in her beauty and reliability while the Johnson was carted off ignominiously to an uncertain future. I don’t know if the buyer plans to use the engine or if she will be stripped for parts. Either way, our paths have diverged and there is a patch of free space in the shed now that wasn’t there this morning. Goodbye old friend, I caught many fish as saw wondrous things thanks to you.

coarse fishing, Fishing in Ireland

Into the light

Let me say straight away that I am a dyed-in-the-wool game fisher. Brought up on river fishing with fly and spinner I missed out on coarse fishing completely all my life, up until now. I’m on solid ground when it comes to chasing trout and salmon and have a reasonably firm grasp of the basics when angling for those species. To a degree I have kept up with the technical and tactical advances in game fishing over the years as well. Of poles, groundbait and keepnets I know not a jot, at least I didn’t up until very recently.

My new project of aiming to catch at least one fish from each county in Ireland has inadvertently led me down a very different path though, one which is proving to be bewildering but at the same time an interesting challenge. I need to learn how to catch coarse fish from scratch, so the last few weeks have been an education for me. To be perfectly honest I have caught way more coarse fish either by accident or design on fly tackle than I have on floats and legers.

A small roach caught on the fly

My fishing den has shelves groaning under the weight of books on fishing from skinny little booklets on individual rivers to mighty tomes encompassing the minutest details of game and sea fishing. What you won’t find there are books on coarse fishing. I scanned the dustcovers for any stray coarse angling books which I might have forgotten about but could only find one slim volume which gave some brief details of the different species but nothing on angling methods. From the pages of this book I gleaned that Bream were common in Ireland along with Perch but that other mainstays of English coarse fishing such as chub and barbel were absent completely and carp were scarce. Of course we have countless millions of tiny roach in virtually all our Irish waterways these days and I have been told in the past about some lakes which are full of that most handsome of fish, the rudd. At least this narrowed things down a bit for me.

The internet can be viewed as one of the great evils of our times but it certainly came to my rescue when researching coarse fishing methods these last few weeks. YouTube is jam packed with useful instructional videos on how to catch just about anything that swims and there were hours spent watching experts haul out impressively large bags of bream and roach using methods and baits which could have been developed on the moon for all I know. I admit to being fascinated by pole fishing, the concept that you take your rod apart every time you hook a fish seems so alien to me! I very quickly dismissed poles and whips (whips are shorter poles apparently) from my potential armoury as being too cumbersome and expensive for my needs. I want to be able to spent short sessions at new waters meaning I will probably have to move a fair bit to find good spots, setting up all the equipment for pole fishing looks like it takes the organisational ability and heaving lifting of a military regiment.

A Common Cary I caught a few years ago in England on freelined bread

I already owned a float rod, a cheap Shakespeare jobbie that landed me some roach and carp back in England many moons ago. I can clearly recall the alarming bend in that rod when a good sized carp took off for the other side of the lake but it was only ever used a few times and remains in good nick. It will do nicely for float fishing for roach and rudd and anything else that can be tempted on the stick or waggler. Ferreting around in various tackle boxes yielded some old floats and a box of mixed split shot but no line that was light enough for making hook lengths. And so the shopping list began. I guess I knew it would come to this and that some excuse to spend money on fishing tackle would be found. My research on the internet was raising lots of questions and there were obvious gaps in my equipment just as there was in my knowledge. Bottom fishing was a case in point.

A carp breaks the surface as he feels to hook

Watching the experts on YouTube it became obvious that feeders are a major form of fishing for bottom dwelling species such as bream and tench. The concept of a small device which carries ground bait close to your baited hook is the mainstay of much bottom fishing and this appears to have now flourished into a cornucopia of tackle to cope with every possible variable within the basic method. The rods to hurl the rigs prodigious distances, the details of the rigs themselves and the baits used all held me in close attention and I soaked in all this new-fangled knowledge like a sponge.

I needed a rod for feeder fishing but I was not going to go mad on one of the new specialist feeder rods which are eye-wateringly expensive. It seems that fishing big Irish lakes for bream often involves long, accurate casting of the feeder on large beds of ground bait. Add in the wind which is a feature of this part of the world and you can see that long rods for distance casting in difficult conditions are a real bonus. But I am not planning on jumping into the extreme end of coarse fishing. I want easy venues (to start with at least) where casts are going to be of more normal proportions, depth of water won’t be excessive and the stresses and strains on tackle will be commensurately less. Those of you who follow this blog will recognise where this is all heading – I needed an old ABU rod!

When ABU where still making all their gear in Sweden back in the seventies and eighties they produced a range of coarse fishing rods in both fibreglass and carbon. I quickly found a couple of old leger rods, one light and one medium, which were going for a song and duly snapped them up. An old Cardinal 444A seemed to be a good reel to match up with these rods and filling it with 6 pound line gave me a pretty balanced outfit for basic feeder fishing. OK, so these rods are heavy by todays standards but look, I will be fishing short sessions so fatigue won’t be an issue.

I have also been picking up different types and weights of feeders. Each have their own niche and it looks like I need different ones for different scenarios. I can see a lot of experimentation is going to be required but that is a large part of the fun from my perspective. I remain unsure if I need to expand into method feeders as they seem to be more specialised and the carp fishing lads love them. For now I will stick to simple cage, block and open end feeders for a start anyway. I might be wrong but feeders look like the kind of thing which will get stuck on the bottom easily and so I am anticipating losses. My 6 pound breaking strain running line is hardly going to be fit for much pulling and dragging if the gets snagged in weeds or rocks.

The whole issue of groundbait is another minefield. The experts all agree that Irish bream require huge volumes of groundbait to attract the fish to your swim and to hold them there. Hugely expensive bags of prepared groundbait in an amazing array of flavours and textures seemed to be used by the top fishers but I am unconvinced as yet that I need to go down this road. For a start I will be avoiding the big, deep loughs with their shoals of specimen sized ‘dustbin lids’. I get that you need copious amounts of ground bait to pull the shoals in to casting range on these challenging venues and that little old me with a handful of bread or sweetcorn would likely be fishing barren water most of the time on the big loughs. But I want to cut my teeth on much smaller venues where I already have a good chance of covering fish. Big bags of huge fish simply don’t excite me and a modest catch from an intimate lough are much more appealing to this newbe. I was thinking of making a simple groundbait out of a mix of bread and bran but most of the research I have done suggests your groundbait for Irish waters needs to be dark in colour. Brown flake may be the way to go but I will figure something out.

Hook baits opens up another can of worms (sorry). My small amount of previous coarse angling involved bread paste on a size 14 hook dangling below a stick float and I saw no reason to doubt this would work here in Ireland too. While bread is used it looks like maggots, coloured red preferably, are a better bet for most fish. That presents a slight problem as nobody in my area stocks maggots and I will have to buy them locally when I go coarse fishing. The humble worm is also used a lot and they will be easier to lay my hands on. Even easier again is that old reliable sweetcorn. I am hoping sweetcorn does work as I can have a few tins stowed in the car ready for use at any time.

Small roach, probably one of the species I will target

When to go coarse fishing is all a bit of a mystery too. With no close season here in Ireland I can in theory go fishing every day of the year but obviously some times are much better than others. I had always imagined coarse fishing was a summer sport, lazy days watching the tip of the float under blue sky. It turns out hardy coarse anglers go about their business in winter too. Tench seem to be a summer only fish but the others can be caught all year round. This very interesting for me as the option of fishing outside the game angling season has great appeal. Then again, sitting hunched up against the lashing rain in a howling gales does not sound too great! The jury is out on winter fishing for now.

So after all my hours of research it looks like I will be targeting Bream, Roach, Rudd and Tench this summer. I will float fish or use feeders and have all the gear I now require bar a landing net which I will pick up sometime soon. Venues will be carefully chosen for size, ease of access and species present rather than looking for specimen sized fish or heavy bags. Over the course of the past few months my perception of coarse fishing has completely altered. Previously I had no interest in the sport at all. It looked difficult and far too technical for me with the outcome not worth the effort and expense. Now, I am looking forward to learning new techniques and catching new species in the heart of the Irish countryside. From a fog of confusion back in the autumn I can now see some glimmers of light. Whether this new found insight into coarse fishing will translate into fish on the bank remains to be seen but it has been fun just learning more about this fascinating branch of our sport.

Fishing in Ireland

IFI

An interesting piece in the local rag (the Mayo Advertiser) by Cllr Michael Burke who sits on Mayo County Council. In a half page piece he discusses the huge changes in the structure of the old IFT which has over the years become Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI). He rightly points out that angling tourism which is so vital to the local economy is down and the poor catches of recent years is a major contributing factor. He goes on to point out that a lot of the important work such as maintaining the spawning beds does not appear to be happening as they used to. He says that IFI staff numbers are now down to ‘about 300’.

I can’t disagree with anything in Michael’s article but I would add some additional reasons for the slump in catches. The whole ecology of the western lakes has radically altered over the past 30 years and invasive species are now thriving at the expense of our native trout and salmon. There is no control of the huge shoals of roach and increasingly bream in our lakes. Just imagine the biomass consumed by there fish which would have otherwise fed trout and young salmon.

Mink are present in large numbers across the country and these creatures do immense damage, not just to fisheries but all forms of wildlife. Virtually no controls are in place bar the odd trap here and there.

Agricultural run off is a problem nobody wants to talk about for fear of upsetting the farmers (read voters). Intensive cattle production in a huge local employer so the slurry produced and then sprayed on the land is not going to tackled by government.

The number of dwellings on or near the banks of lakes and tributaries has exploded and these feed phosphates into watercourses, further upsetting the balance of nutrients.

I love fishing the peaceful lakes and rivers here in Ireland but the days of good catches and pristine waterways is long gone. I applaud Michael Burke’s piece in the local paper but it is actions we need if there is going to be any sort of an improvement in angling here in Ireland.

32, Fishing in Ireland, sea angling, shore fishing

32 – Part 1. Where to start

Having decided that I will tackle trying to catch a fish in each of Ireland’s 32 counties I now need to sit down a begin planning the whole thing. This is going to be a large part of the fun, just researching various places to fish a figuring out what I need to use, how to get there etc. The good old internet is a wonderful tool for searching out potential fishing spots There may not be a huge amount of detail on most websites but there is often enough to whet the appetite and encourage some deeper inspection via phone calls or emails. Perhaps in pre-internet days it was more fun just turning up somewhere and hoping the fishing was going to be vaguely like what you expected. Nowadays we can be much better prepared and forearmed by a few quick taps on the keyboard.

I started by listing all 32 counties so I could get a feel for where my travels are going to take me. I was a bit taken aback my my near complete lack of knowledge of so many of them! I honestly thought I knew more about Ireland than it appears I do. Here is how I summed each county up in one line:

County	Province	short description
Antrim	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	Far north, rocky coastline. Looks out on Scotland
Armagh	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	virtually landlocked
Carlow	Leinster	Small, landlocked
Cavan	Ulster	Hundreds of lakes, pike fishing paradise
Clare	Munster	Long coastline, Cliffs of Moher
Cork	Munster	Huge, famous for the sea angling
Derry	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	Unknown to me
Donegal	Ulster	Rugged
Down	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	Belfast, Mountains of Mourne
Dublin	Leinster	City, industrial, canals
Fermanagh	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	Rural, lots of lakes
Galway	Connaught	The Corrib, shallow coastal waters
Kerry	Munster	Sea angling
Kildare	Leinster	Landlocked, commuter towns
Kilkenny	Leinster	Known for its hurling not its fishing
Laois	Leinster	No coast, not much fishing as far as I know
Leitrim	Connaught	Coarse fishing around Carrick upon Shannon
Limerick	Munster	The Shannon
Longford	Leinster	Heart of the midlands, lots of coarse fishing
Louth	Leinster	Border county, river Fane
Mayo	Connaught	Western lakes, river Moy
Meath	Leinster	The grand canal
Monghan	Ulster	Rural, also lots of lakes
Offaly	Leinster	Central location, no salmon
Roscommon	Connaught	Mainly coarse fishing
Sligo	Connaught	Lough Arrow
Tipperary	Munster	Lough Derg
Tyrone	Northern Ireland (Ulster)	Lough Neagh
Waterford	Munster	Munster Blackwater
Westmeath	Leinster	Sheelin
Wexford	Leinster	Bass
Wicklow	Leinster	Mountains

Suddenly, the enormity of my task is laid out before me. Gaps in my understanding the size of the grand canyon have opened up before my eyes and completion of the 32 seems unattainable. Where do I even begin. My embarrassingly skimpy knowledge of some (most) parts of the island needed to be addressed if I was going to achieve my goal. I couldn’t set off for the far flung corners of the Ireland without some better understanding of the different places I hoped to visit. I have now given myself a target to read up about each county before I visit it.

West Cork landscape, i save this for later in the year

Getting the first one under my belt is going to be tough. March is usually the beginning of my angling year but it would be nice to have bagged one or two counties before then to set the ball rolling. Some possibilities include trying for whiting and coalfish from Glassilleun beach in Co. Galway or maybe a pike from one of the lakes in Leitrim or Monaghan. There used to be great bass fishing in Kerry in January but I think that fishery has all but collapsed these days, so the huge journey there and back would be a very risky objective.

I’ve never fished Glassilleun beach despite its close proximity to the mark on Little Killery which I fish regularly. That’s because the beach itself is a very popular spot for tourists, walkers and others during the summer. The small car park is normally thronged and romantic couples, boisterous dogs while Japanese tourists roam the golden crescent of sand in all weathers. I don’t blame them, it is a lovely spot with grand views out to sea. Night time during the winter is the time to fish here, in biting winds with a sea running. Then the whiting come close to the shore looking for food which has been loosened from the sand. Importantly, it also the best time to avoid the holidaymakers and dog walkers.

Glassilleun beach, Co. Galway

So unless a better idea pops into my head I am planning on targeting Glassilleun beach in January next year to kick off the 32 project. In between now and then I’ll keep my ear to the ground in case I hear of anywhere else that happens to be fishing well.

32, Fishing in Ireland

32

Ideas churn around in my mind as stirred in some kind of witch’s cauldron. Most are flights of fancy which never get off the ground but sometimes, just occasionally, an idea grows roots and turns into actions. 32 is one of those few notions which is becoming a reality. I want to take a bit of time to describe to you this bold new idea and how exactly I plan to turn the thoughts into reality. I am painfully aware that my blog has long ago degenerated into a litany of blank days and moans about the lack of fish, so I want to head off in a new direction and take readers on a bit of a voyage of discovery.

So what is 32? It is not the answer to all life’s questions nor is it indeed anything to do with maths or arithmetic. Those of you who are familiar with Ireland will instantly recognise it as the number of counties on the island of Ireland. A small history lesson may help to make things a bit clearer for those not well versed in the machinations of Irish history. When the Irish Free State was formed the English government wanted to hang on to the 6 counties which make up modern day Northern Ireland (please note this is not Ulster as it comprises of 9 counties, 6 in the North and 3 in the South). That left 26 counties in what would become the Republic of Ireland. So 26 counties in the south, 6 counties in the north makes a total of 32 counties. Are you with me so far? The 6 counties in Northern Ireland are part of the United Kingdom and the other 26 all form the Republic of Ireland.

My great idea is to set out to catch a fish in each of the 32 counties on the island of Ireland and document the highs and lows in my blog. Why bother you may well ask? Firstly, the last few seasons have been a disappointment for me on the angling front with repeated blanks and poor catches from my local waters. At the same time I can recall some brilliant fishing in other parts of the country from the past. Spinning for Bass in Kerry as the sun rose in the East, catching feisty little Brown Trout from a tiny lochan on a hillside Donegal, Rainbows leaping as they felt the hook on a put-and-take in Tyrone – the list goes on and on. It all seems in such sharp contrast to the endless blank days on Conn this past 2 seasons. Since the end of the 2019 season I have mulled over these past successes and recent failures and come to the conclusion that I need to spread my piscatorial wings somewhat and try new venues. From there, it was but a short hop to the need to give these wanderings some structure. That was when the concept of the 32 counties hit me.

the light fading over the hills of Donegal

Refining this structure has taken me a bit of time. Exactly what was I trying to achieve? What were the self-imposed rules of this venture going to be? My initial thoughts were to aim to catch a trout (any species of trout) in each of the counties but upon further examination this seemed to be a bit restrictive. This blog deliberately covers all legal forms of angling as I enjoy a wide variety of fishing experiences. Limiting myself to trout only felt like a betrayal of why I started to blog in the first place.

Then I thought about stretching it out and including salmon as well as trout but that would have meant leaving out sea angling. That didn’t appeal to me either so in the end I have settled on a rather broad based structure, ‘to catch at least one of any species of fish from each of the 32 counties in Ireland in a 24 month period’. Thus it shall remain and I now need to do some detailed planning and figure out where and when I shall tackle this herculean task.

My next hurdle was to negotiate the tricky question of C&R. I habitually return most of the fish I catch, keeping a few for the pot. I decided that I would be pragmatic and judge each fish as they came to the net. Coarse fish will all go back and I don’t eat brown trout so they will be returned. Rainbows may be kept I suppose and sea fish such as Mackerel and Pollock will be probably retained too providing I am heading home immediately after the fishing. I abhor waste, especially wasting fish which could otherwise have been released.

What about my carbon footprint? All these miles trekking across the countryside in a diesel engine car cannot be good for the environment. I can’t say that I am a big fan of offsetting and instead am actively working to reduce my own personal carbon footprint by reducing power and fuel usage at home.

This little venture does throw up a whole series of challenges for me. The most obvious is going to be a lack of local knowledge for the vast majority of the venues I will be fishing. I know my own ‘patch’ around Mayo reasonably well but beyond that I am pretty much in the lap of the gods. Other variables include:

Time is going to be limited as I have recently started my own business and this is going to curtail my available free time.
As for the timescale I feel it is important to set a firm start and end date. The obvious choice is 1^st January to 31^st December 2020 but I won’t be able to commit to cramming all 32 into one calendar year. So, I am stretching the project over a two year time frame, starting on the first day of 2020 and aiming to complete by the last day of 2021.
Weather is always an issue in Ireland! A planned day on the shore can easily be blown off with high winds or a river trip washed out by a flood. To some degree this can be mitigated by having a back-up venue planned but realistically there will be days when it simply not safe to fish.
Access could be another issue for me as I may not always be able to fish exactly where I intended. When planning these forays I will carry out as much research as possible beforehand but there are bound to be a few hitches along the way. The internet is such a wonderful tool and I hope by doing thorough research I will avoid most of the pitfalls but I won’t always get it right and plans will need tweaking if access is denied to some spots.
My old VW lacks reliability shall we say. Breakdowns are a very real threat when the odometer already reads well over 300k miles. The car gets serviced regularly but who knows what bits will break or fall off on the road. For me it is part of the charm of the whole project, setting off in an old car with ancient gear to try and catch a few fish in far flung places. I am under no illusions that the car will give trouble and there will be breakdowns but I am not overly concerned about it.
Financial constraints. I need to be honest here, I’m not planning on spending a small fortune on this project. Cheap and cheerful is going to be my approach. Expensive beats on salmon rivers are out for a start. I will make do with day-ticket waters when chasing silver. In Ireland we are blessed with lots of inexpensive fishing so there should not be any need to overspend.
Family commitments need to be taken into consideration too of course. I am toying with the idea of dedicating some weekends away to the more distant counties and that will be a strain. Stretching the project out over two years will make the balance of family life and the fishing more manageable.
A lack of technical knowledge. I am OK when fly fishing, spinning or shore fishing from rocks but all forms of coarse fishing are black arts to me right now. Using feeders, the art of groundbaiting, float selection and shotting patterns, where and how to fish for the different species of coarse fish are all going to have to be learned and learned quickly. I don’t have the luxury of an extended apprenticeship in coarse angling. Beach fishing is something I have practiced only occasionally and distance casting is not my forte. I have a lot to learn!
Exhaustion, both mental and physical. There will be blanks and days when nothing seems to go as planned and I need to be able to get through the bad times and keep going. Plain old tiredness will come into it too as some parts of the country are 5 hours’ drive from Mayo. I am planning on combining some short fishing sessions with days I am working in far flung corners of the island which are bound to be exhausting.
On a similar note there is the question of health. I suffer from arthritis in my feet, ankles and knees which curtails much of my fishing. I also have vertigo and take medication to keep it under control. A flare up of either condition will be a big problem. The arthritis is there more or less constantly, giving me a lot of pain in my feet and ankles and reducing my mobility considerably. I have learned to live with it and put up with the pain. The Vertigo is a different beast and an attack in 2018 left my sense of balance severely compromised and the need for daily medication. There is always a niggling worry I will suffer another attack someday but my poor balance has curtailed much of my fishing. Until you lose your balance it is impossible to realise just how important it is to your everyday life. Tackling the 32 counties will have to be done without fishing some spectacular but difficult to access rock marks.
Recording it all on the blog. I know the scant few words you read here don’t look like much but time and effort is required to add content to any blog. I find that I need to write posts soon after the fact, certainly within the next 24 hours. I have never timed how long it takes me to write a post and publish it but I would guess an hour or more is about right. Finding an hour going spare after I have been fishing will be an interesting challenge.

the old car

Another aspect of recording it all is going to be my dodgy photographic skills. I have a reasonable camera but using it to full effect is something I am still wrestling with. I will try my best to conquer the intricacies of a DSLR but bear with me if some of my shots are not the best – we all have to learn! This learning new skills is going to be a challenge but at the same time part of the reason for undertaking the 32 counties in the first place. We all need to face up to new challenges and learning new skills, be they using a camera or learning to fish for Tench stretch us in ways we will benefit from. So photography is another area where my interest needs to be turned into knowledge. I’m looking forward to that too.

There is little serious angling between the end of October and the beginning of March in Ireland. Yes, I know about the early salmon rivers which open on the 1^st January but to have a respectable chance of catching something I regard March as the starting point of my fishing year. That concentrates the opportunities to fish into only 8 months. That rather neatly translates into one county every two weeks. To me that is a heck of a lot of angling to fit in! I am avidly reading up on the forms of fishing and species of fish which are new to me and it seems there is some coarse fishing during the winter months which may just give me a few extra days fishing but I have a lot more research to do before committing to long drives on bad roads to try and extract an odd Roach or Perch. The jury is out on that one for now……..
As I write this we are still unclear what the actual effect on crossing the border between the Republic and UK is going to be like. With 6 counties to fish in Northern Ireland it looks like I will be gaining some first-hand experience.
Licences, permits etc. Permission will be required and angling licences purchased too. So there will be some expenses in addition to all the travel.
Tackle should not be an issue for the game and sea angling as I have a huge range of rods and reels in good condition. Apart for small bits and bobs of end gear I don’t anticipate buying any new tackle for those arms of the sport. Coarse fishing is a different story and I am shocked at the volume and expense of coarse angling equipment which the top anglers use on a regular basis. I am not going to go the whole hog on kitting myself out with poles, those fancy tackle boxes and the other paraphernalia. I own a 12 foot float rod, a couple of leger rods and an as yet unused feeder rod with some old reels to match. These will have to do for now. A selection of end gear and some new lines will need to be bought though as well as bait and ground bait. I’ll go into details of my gear later on as it is largely unconventional.

The range of different fish is equally extensive and I am excited to think about the new species I could encounter. I have never caught Bream, Tench, Rudd or Hybrids but they will definitely be target species for me when I fish in some counties. I have never caught a Roach of more than 6 inches long nor a perch of greater than a pound and a half, maybe I’ll break one or both of those PB’s. Hopefully there will be a few oddities along the way too, such as Shad which is a fish I will specifically target down in Carlow.

If you draw an imaginary line diagonally through Ireland from Belfast to Cork the lands to the North and west contain most of the game angling while to the South and East of the line is mainly coarse angling water. In saltwater there is a huge mix of different coastlines around this island. One of the great attractions of this venture is the sheer variety of locations out there for me to sample. Sleepy urban canals, fast flowing hillside torrents, heady clifftops and miles of salty, golden beaches all await me. I’ve always enjoyed the challenges of fishing new places and the mix of previously untried locations, methods of angling new to me and the backdrop of the Irish countryside seem like a heady brew to this tired and jaded angler.

Reaching the furthest corner of the Emerald Isle can be a bit of a trek from my base in Mayo. Antrim and Derry are 4 – 5 hours from home and the same goes for Wexford/Waterford area in the South-east. That is a ten hour round trip without even wetting a line. Although traffic can be heavy in the cities, rural driving is largely a pleasurable experience once you have grown used to the Irish style of driving. Anyone using indicators is seen as an oddity, letting someone out in front of you at an opening is a sign of madness, reducing speed in poor conditions such as snow is unheard of – the list is lengthy. My pet hate is supermarket car parks which everyone seems to regard as their own private race track. Despite living in Ireland for all these year I still find it hard to accept the truly awful driving of my fellow road users but railing against the majority is a waste of time and emotional effort. I need to learn to just put up with it and hope I avoid contact with the worst of the drivers out there.

The car. So what does my transport consist of? For many years now I have been running round in a 2001 VW Golf estate car, so many years in fact that it now boasts over 300k miles (not kilometres mind you) on the clock. While there have been occasional temptations to upgrade to a new car the old gal keeps on chugging along so I stick with her. These days there are a few dents and scrapes in the bodywork which somehow adds to the warm fuzzy feeling I have towards this old automobile. Driving down narrow boreens inevitably adds further scars to the paintwork every season but it really does not matter at all with an old car like this. I guess it has been reasonably reliable over the years. The diesel engine still returns nearly 50 miles to the gallon on the open road and all the controls and switches (with the notable exception of the air conditioning) are still working. In short, for this type of project it should fit the bill nicely. Repairs, when required are effected by a good mate who is a wizard when it comes to good old fashioned automobile repairs. He would rather fix something rather than chuck it out and buy a new replacement. Without him the old VW would have long ago been consigned to a scrapyard.

Let me explain a little bit about the gear I propose to use for doing the 32 counties. After a lifetime of angling I have amassed a huge amount of tackle but none of it is your ‘top end’ expensive rods and reels. I take particular pleasure in using old tackle and in particular I am a huge fan of vintage ABU kit. Growing up in the sixties and seventies I lived through the age when ABU were producing the finest tackle available and I still believe some of their reels are the finest ever produced. When I started working in the mid-seventies I immediately began to purchase ABU rods and reels and that habit, though it has waned at times, has persisted with me right up to the present day. In common with most others of a like mind I believe that the quality of ABU products diminished greatly when production was switched to the Far East so I buy up only the gear which was made in Sweden. A lot of this is still available on the second-hand market at reasonable prices and the quality of the engineering is such that these old reels (and to a certain extent the rods) is still better than modern equivalents.

I won’t bore you with a long list of my rods and reels, suffice to say I have a pretty extensive collection running to well over 30 rods and about 50 reels. I only buy tackle I intend to use so none of this lot is in pristine showroom condition, rather they are well maintained everyday rods and reels for use on the water. I love the silky smooth feel of the Ambassadeur multipliers and Cardinal fixed spool reels. Using them really adds another dimension to a day’s fishing for me. A good glass fibre rod, although heavy, is a joy to use and I can’t help thinking it is the best material for some types of rod. So if you see an old bloke on a riverbank in Ireland chucking out lures or bait on some ancient ABU gear there is a good chance it is yours truly.

I especially enjoy using the heavier ABU rods such as the Atlantic 423 spinning rod and the Legerlite 234. These are beautiful rods with bags of power when required. They inspire confidence and the trade off in weight is a small price to pay in my book. I also have some of the short baitcasting rods and they are great fun to use for smaller species. That is not to say I only possess ABU kit, I have a range of rods and reels made by other manufacturers such as Daiwa and Shakespeare. All my flies are tied by myself and the challenge here is to cut down the sheer number of flies I bring with me. Talking of flies I will add any unusual patterns or variations of standard ties in the main blog so that the 32 pages don’t become overly complicated. There will be enough going on in them without adding things like fly patterns.

I also swear by some of the old Swedish ABU baits such as the Toby, Tylo and Krill. Again, I have used these all of my angling life and firmly believe they out fish newer baits stamped out on a press in China or Korea. Owning hundreds and hundreds of baits means I am forever switching them when on the river or lake but that just adds to my day out too. I am perfectly willing to accept that I could sell off 95% of my gear and not suffer any reduction in my catches but that is not the point. I get enjoyment from using different rods and reels or trying a different baits. Each to his or her own I say.

ABU Tylo

Having declared my love for all things ABU I must admit that I do like Rapala plugs as well (bit of a Nordic thing going on here!). The original floaters and countdown sinkers are excellent baits and I have started to trial the newer scatter raps now as well. The action in the water is excellent and I have great faith in their fish catching ability. I have some small ones which are yet untried but I suspect they might be good for Perch and jack Pike, time will tell.

Anyway, as I rove around Ireland you will see me use a host of various baits and lures, some of which may even catch the odd fish or two. I’ll try to keep note of the ones I use but I’m pretty sure I’ll miss some of them. Who knows, perhaps some new and otherwise untried baits may be successful for me in some far flung corners of the island. For instance, I hear that the best lure for Shad in the river Barrow is the Tasmanian Devil, a lure I have never even tried before now.

Talking of tackle, I am thinking about pulling together a small ‘kit’ of basic gear which I could keep in the car at all times in case I get an opportunity for an hours fishing as I travel the country. My new work will in all probability take me different parts of Ireland so having a couple of rods with me makes a lot of sense. Initial thoughts are this would consist of 4 rod/reel combinations and a bag of bits to cover very basic float, light spinning, heavy spinning and light fly fishing. Scenarios I can foresee would include an hour on a canal where the float rod could be used for Roach or Bream but I’d have the backup of the small spinning rod to try for a Perch if I did not have any bait. Or the heavy spinning rod could be used off a pier for Mackerel or to chuck a plug into a Pike lake. My Orvis fly rod throws a no.5 line and this is adequate for small river fishing as well as top of the water smaller lake fishing for browns and rainbows. If I am planning on a full day fishing I will be properly organised and take all appropriate gear with me but for those odd occasions when an opportunity presents itself for an hour on some stretch of water this ‘kit’ could be a godsend.

It’s just an idea at the moment but it seems to make sense. There should be space in the car for this limited amount of gear. With this lot I could fish for trout, pike, perch, roach, rudd, mackerel, Pollock and wrasse. Everything bar the rods would fit in a large box and I could take a bag along and just fill it with the bits I needed for that session and off down the bank I’d go.

Tackle shops are going to be a necessary evil for me during my travels. Why an evil you may ask? Well you see I am a sucker for the salesman patter and will inevitably end up buying stuff I don’t really need. Tackle shops will provide me with permits, bait and ground bait and hopefully some advice as well. But I am resigned to adding to my huge collection of tackle just for the sake of it. At this stage I am guessing the coarse fishing areas will be my biggest challenges and so the local tackle shops in those counties will be visited and consulted. Irish tackle dealers are the same as those the world over, only too keen to help out anglers with advice as well as selling them gear. I am looking forward to meeting some of these characters in far flung corners of the island.

Some days are going to be dedicated to fishing with early starts and long journeys but others will likely be short sessions snatched after work. This will be challenging angling with little time to get to know a piece of water and so sticking to basic methods will be the name of the game. The humble worm will likely feature as bait. Readily available and good to tempt most freshwater species it could well be my mainstay. Then again, a tin of sweetcorn tucked away in the tackle bag is a good standby for some species. Pre-baiting is a luxury I cannot afford which is a pity as it certainly seems to be key to good catches of some species such as Bream. But, if my goal is catch one fish from each county, one single solitary fish is all I need to achieve my target. Big bags are not going to be a feature of this venture.

What happens if, despite all my planning, I fail to catch a fish at my selected venue? I’m in no doubt that this is going to happen and probably happen quite often. A blank will entail me visiting that county again and again until I catch a fish. Blanks in Antrim or Wexford are going to be expensive and time consuming failures! I suppose the best approach is to give myself the maximum chances to catch fish at each venue, meaning I need to do a lot of research into each place beforehand. I also need backup plans for when things are going wrong. For example, finding a river in flood may rule out the chances of catching anything there but if I have a ‘plan B’ in the shape of a second or even third choice of venue it could negate the loss of the first venue. I can’t just turn on my heel and drive all the way back home just because one river is out of ply. I will need to think about varying locations and target species in light of any blanks, there is no point in going back to the same spot and hoping for a better result! There is a huge element of ‘suck it and see’ with the whole of this adventure and making adjustment and changes as I go along is part of the fabric.

I want to try to vary species and methods as much as possible without tying myself to impossible dreams. My disturbing lack of knowledge about all forms of coarse fishing means I will be taking some calculated risks but taking along a small spinning rod to cast worms or small spinners for perch should go some way to providing a back-up in many places. But I don’t want this to end up as me simply fishing for the lowest common denominator. It will make for dull reading indeed if all I do is worm for perch and bottom fish for dogfish (probably the easiest two species to catch in Ireland). Hence the different types of venues and methods of fishing.

I will need to provide photographic evidence of all catches too. Just writing a post saying that I caught a fish is not good enough, I need to show clear evidence that I caught the fish and, importantly, that I caught it where I said I did. To this end I will take liberal amounts of photos and add them to the posts. Pictures of the whole trip and not catch will be taken so you get a ‘feel’ for the whole trip as this is just as important to me as the actual landing the fish. Who knows, I may even play around with video!

I read somewhere recently that a ‘good’ days fishing happens to competent anglers on average every fourth trip. I know my own average of good days is well below that level, leading me to conclude that I am far from a competent angler! Then again, what actually constitutes a good day? Long ago I abandoned all hopes of catching lots of big fish on a regular basis. Too often I have blanked on good waters while those around me hauled out their share (and mine too). As long as there is some faint hope of catching something I am a happy angler. Once that hope dies I pack up and head for home or the pub. Flogging empty water is a thoroughly depressing business and one to be avoided at all costs in my book. Attempting to catch a fish in each county in this land will test my resolve and willingness to keep going even through tough situations. Any stretch of a trout river is going to be a joy to fish and I’m comfortable casting small flies for wild trout so these venues are going to be the jewels in the crown for me. What to do when Bream or Tench refuse my cunningly presented feeder will cause me much more difficulty. Density of loose feeding, castor versus maggots, boilies or minis? As a complete novice these and a hundred more coarse fishing conundrums await me. It will be a steep learning curve but one I am really looking forward too. I beg forgiveness in advance from those of you coarse experts who read this blog, all I can say is that we all had to start somewhere. My mentality is simply to catch one fish at each venue, not attempt to secure large bags. For me, one bream will constitute a good day’s bream fishing!

Planning with near military precision is going to be required and I have made a start. I have created an initial list of potential venues, listed by county. This is very much a ‘first stab’ in the dark and will require much refining over the coming months but it is a starting point. I intend being flexible and taking advantage of any opportunities which present themselves as the months pass. If I hear on the grapevine of good fishing in counties I have yet to tick off I’ll adjust my plans accordingly. A good run of grilse at the weir in Galway or heavy mayfly hatches on Sheelin could send me scuttling across the country to try my luck. Odd occasions like that will not be the norm and instead I will have to plan in some detail where, when and how to fish in each county. No point in turning up at the other end of the country to find my chosen spot has not fished for a month or that it produces good catches in August but I am stood there in my waders in December! In these days of the internet I should be able to glean sufficient information to make informed decisions but I have to accept sometimes I will simply get it wrong and be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such is angling!

I am fairly familiar with some counties but others I have never even visited. I have never set foot in either Kilkenny or Wexford and only passed through Armagh, Down, Offaly, Laois and Tipperary. My knowledge of the fishing in many of the other counties has come from books or the net, not actual experience. The midland counties and the southeast are pretty much a mystery to me right now. The challenges will be many and I am banking on good fortune along with tips and help from other anglers I encounter during my travels. Anglers the world over are a helpful bunch so I am hoping for some free information from my companions on the bank.

I know I have a tendency to fall back on tried and tested methods sometimes when the fishing gets tough (a size 12 Green Peter cast at wild brownies has saved the day many times, as has a silver spoon for Pike) but this may work against me on new venues. I must cultivate an open mind! I do like using two rods when shore fishing, sometimes even three. A ‘normal’ beachcaster hurled out a fair distance, a heavier rod fished very short with a large bait and often a spinning rod in my hand casting a lure or feathers looking to pick up Mackerel or Pollock. This certainly improves my chances not only in terms of numbers but it targets different species, always a good thing when you don’t know the mark well (or at all).

if in doubt, a small Green peter usually works!

So what do I hope to achieve by all this dashing across Ireland, waving rods at fish I have never caught before in places I have never even visited before? I guess I want to address my jaded approach to angling, to re-invigorate my fishing so that I get more enjoyment out of it. Isn’t a change as good as a rest? At the same time I hope to show you, the readers, some new and interesting places as I travel the highways and byways of this lovely country. Ireland has the capacity to confuse, irritate and disturb you at times but alongside that there is a beauty and charm which is hard to match. I hope you enjoy reading about my travels, the successes and inevitable failures, the people I meet and the stunning locations I fish. Two years is a long time to ask you to stick with me but I will do my best to educate and entertain you all as I try my luck in all the odd corners of Eire.

Many of you either live in Ireland or have some knowledge of the fishing here so I am open to your suggestions and comments. Drop me a line if you have anything to say (positive or negative, it all helps).

I will preface my posts on the blog dedicated to the 32. This will keep them separate from my normal musings and make it easier to follow for the reader. As I said earlier, it is looking like I will be able to head off doing the 32 counties thing roughly once every fortnight leaving plenty of space for me to keep adding posts to my normal blog.

So, there you have it. I plan, over the next two years, to catch a fish in every county on the island of Ireland. I may succeed gloriously or fail miserably but I am looking forward to the challenge and invite you all to come on the journey with me. Starting date is the first day of January 2020.

Fishing in Ireland

All over

This morning we went and retrieved my boat from the lake, the last act of a forgettable season Early rain and high winds had subsided by the time we rolled up to the shore and we were greeted by a lone otter playing in the shallows. A nice start to the day.

I baled out the water inside her and took stock of the minor damage which has happened over the season. A cracked knee on one of the boards and some repairs needed to the timber on the bow but nothing too major. Everything else is in good order and it wont take much to ready her for the 2020 season.

peaceful scene at the slipway below the graveyard.

Water levels are up again so it was an easy task to manoeuvre the boat into position and winch her up on to the trailer. There is always a tinge of sadness when the boat comes off the lake for the last time, an underlining of the fact the fishing is over now for another year.

Once safely on the trailer we busied ourselves with the belly band and lights. We are so used to this job there is little said as we each carry out our allotted tasks. Tyres are lobbed into the boat the heavy weight hoisted into the jeep, we leave nothing behind us. Then off down the narrow boreen, hoping we don’t meet anyone coming the other direction a reversing this lot is a pain.

Back in the yard we reverse the whole procedure and pull the boat off the trailer. Handling my boat is tough work, she is very heavy for her size which makes for tired muscles after even an hour of pulling and dragging at here like this morning. That weight, while a drag on dry land is a godsend on the water where she drifts straight and true in a wind.

Safely in the yard now, her home through the frosts and snows of winter until next March when we do it all again

Ans so we bid farewell to the rivers and loughs for 2019, a poor season for me personally but at least there were days when I was out on the water even if the fish were scarce. maybe 2020 will be better.

Fishing in Ireland, salmon fishing

End of season boat lift

Today was a big day for the Glenisland Coop, we lifted all the boats out of the lake. As many members as we could muster gathered at 3pm and amid heavy showers we rowed the boats to the bank, dragged them to the shed or the space behind it and turned the boats over. Heavy, back breaking work but a job that has to be done. Being part of an angling club means that you enjoy access to the fishing but also you need to pull your weight when the hard work needs to be done. Today was made easier by the jovial atmosphere and the willingness of everyone to ‘muck in’ and get the job done. All the boats are safely ashore now and the ones for varnishing are in the boat shed. Thanks to everyone who helped out today, it was a great team effort. Here are some photos of the day.

the first two boats safely in the boathouse

turning a boat over so it can be power hosed

The hardy souls who braved the weather to fetch the boats in. Sartorial elegance was optional.

The harbour empty now, we leave the lough in peace for the winter.

Fishing in Ireland, Pike

Time for reflection

I went fishing this morning, nothing unusual about that I guess. The purpose of this session was not so much about catching fish (which is just as well as I blanked) as taking some time to reflect on how things are going for me now. As luck would have it the mirror flat calm of the day provided a spectacular backdrop as I cleared my mind in the fresh autumnal air.

the boat on a flat calm Bilberry lake

Gear was purposely stowed on board and the engine coughed into life at the third sharp tug on the pull-cord. Off I went, feeding line out through the rings until 30 or so yards separated me at one end and a shiny, silvery spoon on the other. The Pike could not care less about my choice of bait and they stayed out of my way for a couple hours, leaving me to my musings as the battered grey boat circled and swung around reed beds and headlands. I was deep in thought.

water receding on the slipway

The reason for all this deep pondering is I have reached the end of my latest contract at work and now have to decide what to do, carry on in senior management or go off on my own and try something new. I have become somewhat jaded and uninspired lately and it feels like I need a new challenge but jumping ship and going off in an entirely new tangent feels like a big step at my time of life. I needed space and quiet to allow me to get my head around the new reality and a spot of fishing has always been a great help to me over the years when in such a contemplative mood.

close to the reeds, usually a good spot for a Pike but not today

In the past decisions like this were relatively easy for me to make, whatever was the risky/challenging/unexpected course of action would inevitably be the route I would take. Advancing years have made me more circumspect though and I had to think the options through in detail this time rather than simply jump with both feet as I had previously done. Time is not really on my side anymore so this has to be the right move. With no sign of a Pike I swapped baits and tried a new tack, pointing the prow towards the German Shore.

The utter peace was the ideal backdrop to me day, nothing to distract me or interfere with my thinking. I weighed up the pros and cons of each option open to me and then considered any other ideas which popped into my head. Getting back into the international circuit once again had a certain appeal but the more I examined it the less attractive the notion of starting once again in Africa or the Middle East became. At 40 hopping on and off planes and living in dodgy foreign hotels was a breeze but now, 20 years later, the gloss has faded from long periods away from home. The rod arched over alarmingly and the reel squawked into life. A good Pike shook his head somewhere behind the boat and he managed to throw the hooks. I wished him well and carried on my way.

Slowly, some clarity of thought and an understanding of my real wants came into view. My priorities solidified and a clear course of action could be plotted. Once the basics of my plans were firmly established I could fiddle about with the details at a later time, for now I just needed to be 100% sure about which direction to head in and I achieved that this morning as the Honda chugged and the delightful Irish countryside slid gently past. Fishing fulfils so many different purposes for us anglers, some obvious and others more vague and partially hidden from sight. Today I needed space and quiet and Bilberry came to my rescue.

Fishing in Ireland

Tip ring

So those of you who follow these scratchings of quill on keypad will be aware of my deep and abiding love for an old ABU spinning rod, the Atlantic 423. Well, late last season I managed to break the tip ring. As you can imagine this was not a happy moment for me and I immediately set about finding a replacement. Have you any idea how hard it is to source 1970’s ABU rod rings? I will tell you – impossible! I scoured the internet without success and the faithful old rod sat out the end of the season in a corner of the fishing room.

the broken tip ring

ebay came to my rescue though. Not a genuine ABU replacement but instead a packet of 5 similar stainless steel tip rings with the required 3mm internal diameter. I bought them and yesterday I finally got around to making the repair.

I began by carefully cutting off the old whippings using a razor blade. These were for decoration only and the ring itself was actually held in place with some hot melt glue. It was the work of seconds with a match to heat the ring and glue and pull off the broken ring. I took care to leave the silver foil for the decoration in place as I wanted to keep the rod as near authentic as possible. Now I had to pare away at the hard glue which was left on the end of the blank so the new ring would fit.

Melting a drop of hot melt on to the very end of the blank I quickly pushed the new ring into position. Luckily, I got the alignment right first time but using hot melt glue means you can always re-heat the new ring and re-position it.

I had a spool of brown whipping thread in my repairs box so it didn’t take long to whip the legs of the new tip ring and create the open spirals over the silver foil once again. A whip finish using a loop of thread and the waste was cut off to reveal a neat repair job. A coat of clear epoxy finished the job off. She is ready for action next season!

For me, repairs such as this are part and parcel of my fishing. I fix what ever I can rather than send it off to be repaired (or worse still simple thrown away). Winters are spent fixing reels or replacing broken rod rings, making flies and painting lures. I really believe this adds a lot to my enjoyment of the sport. And don’t get me started on boats!!!!

Fishing in Ireland, sea angling

Dogfish traces

When I look at the literature about traces for dogfish I see only very basic rigs mentioned. A simple, plain ledger, either fixed or running is all that I ever read about but here in the West of Ireland we take our doggie traces much more seriously. In this post I will discuss the different traces we use and the reasons why we think we need so many.

So what are we talking about here? Very simply I am going to go over the traces I use when fishing for Lesser Spotted Dogfish, both from the boat and the shore. You can and do pick up doggies on all sorts of bottom gear but there are occasions when you may want to specifically target them and it is the end gear for those times I am writing about. Let’s dive right in with boat traces first.

The basics. Some anglers like to use paternoster type traces but I prefer ledgers when targeting doggies. That leads us to the question of running or fixed ledgers? My personal preference is for a fixed ledger. This is because of the way a dogfish bites. When they pick up your bait you will feel that ‘rattle’ which is so easy to identify. I am guessing that this rattle on the rod tip is due to headshaking by the fish rather than a pick up/run which you get from some other species. I want the hook to find purchase as quickly as possible with dogfish and don’t feel the need to wait for them to run off with the bait – they will either have swallowed it or dropped it. A fixed ledger allows the line to tighten very quickly and hopefully help to set the hook. So for me it is going to be a fixed ledger set up. You can increase your chances by adding a second hook to the ledger on a short snood.
Line. My personal preference is to make the trace out of 30 pound Amnesia. This resists abrasion well and has good knot strength. I’ve used this for years and can’t say it has ever let me down. I do change traces pretty often, checking them frequently for wear and tear and replacing them when I see any damage.

3. Length. OK, this is where it begins to get messy because I vary the length of the ledger depending on how the fish are reacting on any given day. Between 3 and 5 feet is the range I would personally recommend for a single hook ledger. I make two hook ledgers another 18 inches longer to accommodate the second hook and snood. Snood length on the two hook version should be about 6 or 8 inches.

With longer traces it tends to become more difficult to register bites. Remember that you are trying to tempt and then hook fish which make a grab at the bait and swallow it quickly. An overly long trace is not going to be any advantage to you.

Hooks. Personal choice comes into it here. I like smallish hooks around size 1 or 2 but anything up to about a 3/0 will work. If you are missing bites or fish are dropping off on the way up then go to a smaller hook.
Visual attractors. Other angling writers don’t seem to mention visual attractors but in this part of the world they are a key element on any doggie trace. There are a number of different types of attractors in common use:

Beads are the most common and are almost universally used here in the west of Ireland. 8mm or 6mm are the common sizes and if you can think of a colour it has been tried!

Spinning blades such as those used on flying C lures are often used, placed somewhere in the middle of the string of beads. Colours vary through the whole range of silver, gold or copper but fluorescent yellows and oranges are especially favoured. The best way to mount these blades is to add small beads below them so they can spin properly.

Smaller, shiny plastic blades are very popular too. These are available in a wide range of colours and are often used in 3’s or 4’s mixed in with the beads.

cheap and cheerful, these blades add a bit more bling to the trace

Muppets! Yes, I kid you not, we sometimes use a plastic muppet in the middle of the beads too and this can work a treat. Once again, colours are in legion so you can go as crazy as you like. Position the muppet above the hook, not on it otherwise it will cover the bait.

Muppet in the middle of the red beads

Yellow and white is a good combination

Fl. Chartreuse is also a proven killer

Black and White bead – very popular and productive

red and white beads with a yellow blade

lime and black is often good

When it comes to traces for shore fishing for dogfish the same applies as for the boat except everything is scaled down a bit. Don’t add so many beads as the drag will seriously affect your casting distance. Also scale down the size of the beads you use with 6mm and smaller being a better choice.

Use a clip down system to make the rig more aerodynamic and thus aid casting otherwise it will flap about horribly in the air.

small red beads used on this shore trace

In use, I pick a trace to start fishing and if bites are slow I tend to try others as required. By using the set up shown it is on the work of seconds to un-clip one trace and put on another.

Storing traces is important as you will probably end up carrying around a number of different ones. There are lots of commercially available trace carrier systems but if you want to go down a different route you can make some up with discarded ends of pipe lagging. This works fine and is the most commonly used carriers in this area.

Hope that help you sea anglers a bit when out chasing doggies. To me they are a much under-valued fish who give sport on many days when nothing else is around.

Fishing in Ireland, sea angling

Jimmy Burke cup

The middle portion of Clew Bay is ‘dogfish central’, home to packs of Lesser Spotted Dogfish, Bull Huss and a few rays. For this reason it is a popular mark for competition anglers who can bag up on LSD if there is nothing else biting. Saturday past saw me gently bobbing at anchor slap bang in the middle of the bay in the company of some like-minded souls. I was fishing the annual Jimmy Burke memorial cup.

boats at the quay ready for the off

Strong winds and heavy rain have battered the west coast for weeks now but the day in question dawned fine and calm. My old 30 pound boat rod with the 10000 on it was lobbed into the car with all my other gear. Would I remember everything this time? More by luck than good judgement I brought all the necessities along.

it’s all in there somewhere!

Thursday had been windy and wet, Friday the same. But for one the weather Gods smiled upon us and Saturday dawned wet but with only light winds. The forecast was for showers and that is exactly how the day panned out with occasional heavy burst of rain in between long fine spells. A day of rainbows.

Just one of the spectacular rainbows we saw

This particular competition had a rule that you could only use one hook, so the night before I tied up some single hook ledger traces. I used some size 2 hooks, smaller than most anglers use for dogfish but they have relatively small mouths and I like the smaller hooks to match this. As it turns out, my mate Paul handed me a trace to try and I clipped it on and left my own ones in the box for the duration of the day. I have not seen too much written about traces for dogfish in the mainstream angling press bur small changes to traces can make a huge difference to your catch rate. I’ll write a short post soon about this topic.

I was drawn on the Restoric with Tom the skipper. My mate Paul was also drawn on the same boat. Tom knows the marks in the bay like the back of his hand so we were confident he would find us fish. All anglers were given a smart black shirt when they signed in.

Bait consisted of the ubiquitous Mackerel strips, held on to the hook by some shirring elastic. I had a few in the freezer from my last trip out on the boat. While rummaging around amongst the peas and potato waffles I unearthed a bag of sardines so I brought them along as well. Someone had a couple of squid so I pinched some scraps of that too.

bag of frozen bait

note the small size of the chopped bait, it does not need to be big when targeting doggies

Lines went over the side at 10.15am precisely and we were into fish pretty much right from the start. Within minutes I had a heavy thump on the line then it all went quiet so I waited for the bite to develop. Sure enough, after a few minutes the rod began to nod and I lifted into a fish which turned out to be a small Thornback Ray. A doggie soon followed and then a second ray, this time a little bit bigger. My good start was amply rewarded by a white envelope containing €20, the prize for the first person to get three fish in the boat.

Sully lifts up a Thorny

Next to me Sally was hauling in dogfish to beat the band and she continued like this the whole day. Cries of ‘another dog for Sally’ being the soundtrack to the afternoon. Mary started slowly but picked up a few as the day wore on. She then boated a large spider crab which was safely returned (as were all our fish as this is a C&R competition). Paul, seemed to be slow out of the traps too but he made some changes to his traces and after lunchtime he went into overdrive.

Mary’s crab

I was catching steadily with a LSD every 15 minutes or so. These fish hunt by a combination of sight and scent and it takes them a little time to find your bait when it is lowered to the bottom. It is easy to be distracted by the scenery when fishing the bay, especially on a day like Saturday with the vistas constantly changing.

3.15pm was lines up and it was time for the reckoning. Somehow Paul had caught Sally with a tiny ray on his last drop. Each species attracted a different number of points with the humble doggie giving 5 points but a ray adding 15 points to your score. I came in a respectable third for the boat but with 50 anglers spread over 5 boats I was well off the prizes. Ah well, there is always next year.

The Westport boats will be lifted out of the water next week, signalling the end of another season’s fishing in Clew Bay. Winter is coming…………….

steaming home through the Bertra gap with Clare island on the horizon

Fishing in Ireland, salmon fishing, trolling

Red Rapalas

Over the years I have heard of other anglers painting Rapalas red and having great success with them. I always meant to do the same but somehow never got around to actually painting any myself. Then a heard that Rapala actually produced a red coloured plug themselves but only in very small numbers. So the hunt was on to find and buy some examples.

I eventually tracked down a couple of different ones. Both are in a colour called Red Hologram Flake, the Rapala colour code being FRHF. The red paint has been infused with very fine holographic glitter which to the human eye looks very good indeed. Whether the fish find it equally attractive has yet to be proved as the season is over now and it will be next spring before these plugs get a swim.

The first one I bought is a 7cm model, one of those ‘Team Esko’ lures with the cranked lip which according to the blurb on the back of the box are made in Estonia these days. 7cm is really too small for early season trolling but is a fine size for the summer grilse. They have a different action to the original models and I have not used the Team Esko ones before.

Later, I found a bog standard 9cm floating Rapala in the same red hologram flake colour so I snapped that one up too. This is a good all round size and I use this or 11cm are my ‘go too’ sizes for trolling on Lough Conn. I have yet to find a red 11cm but I will keep looking.

As yet untried, I guess that there is every possibility these lures will be useless but somehow I don’t think so. Red was always a popular colour on Lough Conn and the action of the various types of Rapalas have been the downfall of so many fish for me over the years I have a bit of faith in these two crimson beauties. I will keep an eye out for more of these red Rapalas as I think they will catch fish. Some colours don’t inspire me with confidence, the blue and silver ones for example have never caught me a salmon despite being universally popular. I like gold, orange and silver with a black back.

While I was searching for the red ones I spotted an ad online for a ‘large vintage Rapala’. The accompanying photo did not give any idea of the size but I took a punt on it and bought it anyway, thinking it would be a 13cm original. What turned up was a pristine example of the 18cm Magnum in brown and gold livery. It even came in the original box. While I am sure the local Pike would love to chew on this fabulous lure it is just too pretty to be used. Instead, I will add this to my collection of lures for show only. I think this amazing lure dates from the late 1960’s or early ‘70s by the look of it. It really is stunning!

Have any of you who read this blog had any success with the Scatter Rap Rapalas? I have only acquired some recently and have not had the opportunity to try them for an extended period. The idea that they swerve about like a wounded fish is appealing but I wonder if they are good fish catchers. One of the ones I bought is in ‘Gold of Lapland’ colours and it looks wonderful!

Gold of Lapland Scatter Rap

Fishing in Ireland, salmon fishing

Littlewood

Saturday

I drove off the ferry at Cairnryan into stygian darkness filled with rain, the long drive North through the night ahead of me. I was back in my homeland again and the rain perplexed me. All the way to Glasgow it lashed down from the heavens, flooding the road in places and making me think of swollen rivers which would be out of ply for days. The Stincher was huge and the Ayr full to the banks as I crossed them in the early hours of Saturday morning. What would the Aberdeenshire Don be like? I had booked a rod on the lovely Littlewood beat for the coming Monday and I needed some rain, just not as much as the South West was suffering that Saturday night.

The downpour eased off somewhere around Cumbernauld and there was dense fog lying around Stirling before it all cleared by the time I was nearing Dundee. The North East appeared to have missed the rain again and now I was fretting there had not been any precipitation to lift the Don a few inches. The old VW chugged through the night under a clear skies on the final leg of the journey. I shut the engine off at exactly 6am and I slurped a quick cup of coffee in Aberdeen before some well-deserved sleep and dreams of rivers either in raging spate or as dry as a bone. I woke a couple of hours later to another downpour outside.

All of this fretting about rain comes naturally to us salmon fishers. The timing and quantity of precipitation can make or destroy a day on the river. I had been studying the long range weather forecast for a week before I booked Littlewood, banking on a wet Saturday followed by dry conditions on Sunday. The Don was running only 4 inches above summer level the previous week, not enough to fill me with confidence that salmon would be on the move. I wanted a rise of a foot or so on Saturday/Sunday and for the river to start falling again on Monday. In that respect Littlewood was a gamble. It does not have any well-known holding pools, deep sanctuaries where salmon hold up in times of low water. It is a streamy beat where running fish can be picked up in shallow water or from odd corners where they stop briefly on their way up river. Like a piscatorial Goldilocks I wanted the river not too high nor too low, just somewhere in the middle and slowly falling.

I spend the day with family and catch up on all the news in Scotland. A good day, topped off by a hard fought draw at ‘Villa for the Clarets. I’m happy enough with 10^th spot in the Premiership after a tough schedule of games since the start of the season. Everton visit Turf Moor next – another hard game for us.

Sunday

A dry day. Tackle wise I would equip myself with a 13 foot Spey rod and no. 8 lines. A range of tubes and flies with a few spools of nylon were all I planned to take with me. Littlewood extends to 4.5 miles, a lot of water to cover so I wanted to travel light. With time on my hands I checked over the gear, paying particular attention to the reels and leaders. The reels needed a clean and some light oiling which was only the work of a few minutes. Old leaders were cut up and replaced with new ones in readiness for the next day. I made heavy leaders tipped with 18 pound breaking strain tippets. This may sound over the top but some big salmon run the river Don at the end of the season and fish in the high teens or low twenties are not unheard of. Better safe than sorry.

In the afternoon I went on to the Fishpal site to check water levels. This is a hugely helpful service which I would encourage all anglers to use if they are fishing salmon rivers in the UK. It looked like the top of the river did not receive any rain at all as the levels were steady. The same was not true of the rest of the watershed though. Parkhill, on the lower river was at two-and-a-half feet above summer level and falling while, more interestingly for me, Bridge of Alford, a mile or two below Littlewood, was registering one foot and 3 inches and falling. With no rain that should equate to roughly 12 inches of water on Monday, as near perfect as you could ask for on Littlewood. With no fishing on a Sunday in Scotland any salmon in the system can move unhindered on their journey upstream. Many of the fish will be coloured but there should be some fresh ones mixed in with the old stagers. I was in with a chance!

This beat has a historical connection, the much maligned politician Neville Chamberlain used to fish it frequently. It is situated on the left bank of the Don upsteam of Alford. Here the river is about 30 yards wide and comprises a series of runs and glides more than pools. It is great fly water throughout the whole 4.5 miles length of the beat but it does demand a high level of experience to get the best from it. Some sections can be covered using overhead casting but there are lots of bankside trees meaning spey casting is definitely a better option. Fishing water like this demands the ability to read the water and control your fly more than great technical casting ability or depth control. By that I mean there is no need for fast sinking lines or shooting heads as the width of the river and depth of the water are easily manageable with conventional tackle. Mending the line and knowing how/when to hang a fly over a potential lie are keys to success in my opinion.

I had packed three boxes of flies and ferreting around in various jackets and the back of the car I turned up another three boxes! Just how many flies a salmon angler actually requires is something of a moot point. One box is in all honest sufficient but being a fly tyer it is impossible to restrict myself in that way. I rooted out some patterns which would definitely not be required on Monday then roughly organised the more likely ones into one box. The others were chucked into the back of the car, ready if called upon but I felt it unlikely I would require much else than the one box now in my jacket pocket. My usual patterns were in the box, Cascades, some shrimps, Hairy Mary and Willie Gunns.

Monday

Up early. Coffee. Fill a flask and make up some sandwiches. No rain.

I battle my way against the flow of Monday morning commuters as they stream in from the towns and villages around the city of Aberdeen. When I grew up here in pre-oil days the likes of Westhill and Kingwells were small and quiet, now they are home to thousands of workers, many of whom come into the city each day. The traffic thins after Elrick and I head west to the pretty town of Alford. Hopes are high today and confidence is a necessary attitude for the salmon angler. Without belief there is little chance of sport. Confidence is something which grows and is honed by experience. The tiny lessons which are picked up every time we fish add to the lexicon of detail stored in our brains. Things which are impossible to convey in words can mean so much to us, things like the tension on the line when the fly is swimming properly, the look of a lie at the right height of water. Understanding these and many more details are what make some anglers more successful than others. Sure, luck has a huge role to play but experience breeds confidence and confidence leads to fish on the bank. This morning I am feeling confident.

My first view of the river is at the same time encouraging and perplexing. There is some colour and the height looks to be more like 2 feet above summer level. I drive to a parking place near the top of the beat and tackle up. A size 8 Hairy Mary goes on the end of the line then I am off down to the river bank.

I fish through a couple of pools, getting the feel of the rod and my surroundings. The banks are generally rough and I am finding it tough on my arthritic ankles almost from the off. I concentrate on my spey casting which is going OK.

There are some trees which reach all the way to the waters edge, barring downstream progress so I walk back up to the road and skirt the trees. Crossing a field I reach a lovely pool which has given me fish from the opposite side in the past.

I fish it down then change flies and go down it one more time. Near the tail the line tightens but my momentary joy is short lived as a small trout proves to be no match for the salmon gear.

I stick with the small tube as I fish through the next couple of pools but there are no offers here.

tail of the pool. The Don in Aberdeenshire

I switch flies and put on 22mm brass tube to get me down a bit and while I’m at it I change to a sink tip line. I sense the river is actually rising but as I am working my way downstream it is hard to be sure.

There is a lie in a small pocket to the side of a fast run which looks inviting and I swing the heavy tube through it a couple of times. Bang! Fish on and just as quickly he is gone. I pull in the line to check in case the fly had fouled on the leader or I had somehow broken a hook but no, everything looked just right. A simple case of bad luck this time.

I continued to work my way down the river, covering every inch of likely water. There are some lovely pools on Littlewood and I swam a number of different flies through them all on Monday, to no avail.

In the end I had to concede defeat and as the rain started to fall I packed up and left the river in peace. All my fretting about the rain was not entirely wrong, the slowly rising Don did not live up to expectations in terms of fish on the bank. That said, I had a great day out in the fresh air and with a small slice of luck I might have hooked the one fish that came to the fly.

For those of you who don’t mind rough banks I can thoroughly recommend Littlewood. It is very scenic and on its day it can be very productive. Just Monday wasn’t one of those days!

Fishing in Ireland, sea angling

Inish Turk

Plans for this day afloat had changed so often that I had begun to suspect it would never happen. The original day was supposed to take place last month but a strong wind whipped up the sea and it was cancelled at the last minute, leaving us all huddled in the rain on the quay in Westport trying to balance disappointment we would not be fishing with relief we would not be thrown around the deck of a heaving boat all day.

Some of the intrepid anglers

Next up was a rearranged date and a switch to fishing from Roonagh. But the weather managed to upset even that idea with a strong southerly once again leading to a cancellation. The next idea was complex but just might work. Catch the ferry to Inish Turk and fish with the local lads in the lee of the island. Having never been that far out this idea appealed greatly to me. Happily, this one actually came to fruition.

The ferry tied up to the quay on Inish Turk island

I wake early, too early and so I try in vain to go back to sleep. I’d like to say this was due to excitement but in fact poor sleep patterns are just another sign of old age. It’s getting darker in the mornings now as the year wears on. Darker and cooler with the first hint that frosts are on the way. I read for a while before feeding the cat and make myself some breakfast. There is tackle to be sorted out before I can pack the car so I get dressed and commence the hunt for all the necessary tools of the trade. Some come easily to hand, others are lost to me for now and I leave without them.

my old Plano box is about due for retirement!

I always seem to be so disorganised when heading out on the high seas, too many boxes and bags with all the tackle and clothes muddled through each other. Because I have not been doing much sea fishing for many years now a lot of my gear needs to be replaced due to wear and tear or the inevitable blight of corrosion from the salt water. When I am old out on the boat once or twice a year it is hard to justify the expenditure on shiny new tackle or smart new waterproofs but some of my kit is falling apart so I plan to invest in some gear over the winter. Anyway, back to Saturday…………….

We finally found ourselves on the ferry to Inish Turk this Saturday, crossing the outer bay to link up with a local boat who would take us out to fish in the what we hoped would be relatively calm water behind the island for a few hours. We gathered on the deck of the ferry looking nervously at the weather, a big Atlantic swell was pounding the pier even as we sat tied up there. The forecast was for strong southerly winds all day meaning no let up for us. The trip out to Turk takes about an hour and the red ferry pitched and rolled as she climbed each wave and dove into the following trough, water cascading over the decks and anyone foolish enough to venture out there. I had found a nice dry spot for the journey but some of the unwary looked as if the had just rounded the Horn by the time we docked on the island.

Gear and bodies transferred from the ferry to our boat and we were soon heading back out to sea. The journey out had given us a taste of the conditions we were going to have to embrace and sure enough the impressive swell kept up for as long as we were out. The strong wind whipped us along at a fair old pace and the 20 foot swell rocked us endlessly. These were challenging conditions and it was hard work just to keep you feet, let alone fish properly. The scenery was majestic, tucked under the cliffs as we were with the waves crashing and foaming on the rocks sometimes only a few yards away.

I started feathering to try and catch some Mackerel for bait. The first couple of drifts were fruitless but on the next drift we hit a shoal and all the rods stated to catch. As soon as I could I switched to my favourite flying collar rig to search the seabed for Pollock and Cod. Over the years I have found this to be the most effective way to catch Pollack from a boat but on Saturday they were having none of it. Some of the other lads started to pick up Pollack on feathers so I had to swallow my pride and go back to feathers but I baited mine with long strips of fresh Mackerel. Shortly after setting up like this I had a viscous take and a very heavy fish bent the rod hard over. I had got the fish off the bottom and all seemed well only for the line to snap at the middle hook. I’ll never know how big that fish was but it felt like a really good one.

Drifts were short and brutal affairs, the swell throwing us around the deck like rag dolls. Sea sickness afflicted some of the gang and they took to the shelter of the cabin to recover. But gradually the box filled with fish, a mix of Mackerel and Pollock. Codling began to show up, smallish fish of 2-3 pounds. I managed a couple of them before another hefty take saw me boat a nice Pollock of about 8 pounds.

I was happy with that Pollock, the best one I have caught for a while. Soon after we encountered a shoal of Scad, good sized ones at that. Scad are pretty much inedible but the skipper asked us to keep some for the commercial fishermen on the island as they make good bait for their lobster pots. Half a box was filled in no time at all. Next up was a shoal of Mackerel which were high up in the water. Those lads using just feathers could not get down through them and were whipping them out with every drop over the side. I was using large pieces of Mackerel on my feathers and so got through the shoal unmolested. Under the Macks there were cod and Pollock who were happy to take my baited hooks and I had a productive spell with both species. A small ling then turned up, just a bootlace but welcome never the less.

The day passed quickly as is does when you are catching fish. Another good sized Pollock snaffled my baited feather and when it came aboard it turned out to be only slightly smaller than my earlier 8 pounder. By now the fish box was looking healthy.

Some more Scad and Mackerel came aboard and then I caught something unusual – an Octopus. The small pink fella was easily unhooked and returned to the sea. Not to be outdone, Paul landed two of them a few minutes later.

We called it a day and fought our way back to the harbour to hear the other boat had stopped much earlier and found their way up to the community centre on the island. We hitched a lift and found them all happily enjoying a few pints. The views from the community centre were awe inspiring and I am planning on visiting Inish Turk properly next year, maybe with an overnight stay.

In the end I went home with some fine Pollock, 4 codling and a host of Mackerel, some for eating and the smaller ones to be frozen down for bait. Not too shabby for a day of high winds and a huge swell. If we had been more fortunate with the weather I am sure we could have doubled our catch. Our leads were constantly being lifted meaning our baits were not on the bottom where the fish were. I’d like to go back there on a better day!

Tuesday: there is a twist to this tale! I was in Dublin on Monday so did not return to work until Tuesday morning. Toby called me first thing, wanting me to come and discuss a purchasing issue which I thought had been put to bed. Anyway, I stomped off in his direction and entered the large open plan office where he works. I could sense something wasn’t right and sure enough when I reached his desk there was a large silver cup sitting on it. Turns out I had caught the most fish and had won a trophy, the first in many, many years. Happy days!

Fishing in Ireland, sea angling, shore fishing

Bank holiday action

It is a Bank Holiday weekend here in Ireland and after some strenuous chores in and around the house yesterday I had earned sufficient brownie points to head of for some fishing today. The decision on where to go and indeed what to fish for, was left to the last minute. In the end I plumped for Killery and we drove down the winding miles with a fair degree of optimism for the day ahead. This was despite fishing over low water and the lack of any positive reports there were fish in the area. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut feeling, don’t you?

I have to say that he weather forecast did not inspire confidence with heavy rain spreading to the west according to those who should know about such matters. Low cloud draped itself over the mountains all the way from Westport to the harbour, hiding the sunshine and adding to the sense of grandure. Tourists milled around the only street in Leenaun, most of them sensibly clad in brightly coloured waterproofs. Tour buses disgorged their cargo at the usual spots where the breathtaking views of sea and mountain are snapped again and again. A land of endless selfie opportunities. The rain started just as we turned off the main Clifden road and it steadily increased in volume as we wriggled along the narrow track to the edge of the sea.

The chosen mark is only one field away from the car park so even I could manage that short distance. The tackle box, which had felt relatively light when I stowed in the car at home now felt like a ton weight as I tramped through the sodden grass and thistles. On reaching the mark we found three other anglers were already busy with bait and lures. It quickly became apparent they had no success so far though.

Fellow anglers on the mark

I’ve fished here many times before and knew what the likely target species would be – rays and dogfish. That means big smelly baits fished hard on the bottom and we were suitably prepared for that with some frozen sandeels. I tackled up 2 beachcasters and got to work. Baits out, I poured myself a cup of coffee and waited. The rain got heavier.

As it turned out I didn’t have to wait too long. A sharp pull on the 4 ounce rod was the first indication of interest so I let the fish have some time and did nothing bar hold the rod and tighten up the slack line. Minutes passed before the second tug and the rod gave a few nods indicating the ray had actually taken the bait. Safely ashore she was unhooked and returned to the water with little fuss. Not a bad start! By now the rain had assumed monsoon like proportions.

The tide was dropping fast, exposing more and more of the rocks below us. There was still enough of a flow to keep the fish interested and a small LSD was soon brought to hand. The bite from these wee pests is very different to the slow motion take of the ray, more of a rattle than a bite. Minding my hands and keeping the tail under control so he could not wrap himself around my hand the hook was quickly extracted and he was put back into the sea.

OK, so not the best photo of a dogfish but you get the idea

Unbelievably, the rain got even heavier and we hunkered down with our backs to the weather. Bites were coming pretty much to every cast but the fish were shy and only nipping at the baits. To cut a long story short I managed another couple of dogfish either side of dead low water. The rain eventually cleared and blue sky peeped through the clouds for an hour or so. Ben took advantage of the improved climatic conditions to have a sleep on the grass. Unfortunately, the drier weather brought out the midges in force and no amount of Jungle Formula kept the little pests at bay. I was being eaten alive! Just as we were getting used to the nice weather (if not the midges) the sun was chased away by the next band of precipitation.

Like a baby in his cradle……………

It was decision time, the weather was closing in fast and it looked like it would turn nasty. On the other hand the tide was rising and there was every chance the fish would waken up and show more interest in our offerings. In the end we cut our losses and packed up, the rain hammering down on us by the time we had gained the track leading to the car.

Killery looks almost tropical in the brief spell of sunshine

All in all it had been a good trip with a few fish to show for our efforts. The much maligned dogfish had helped to save the day and this year above all others they have been a welcome catch with little else available to us anglers.

The rain was never far away today

The lesson for anyone fishing on the Mayo coast at the time of the year is to keep the bait firmly on the bottom. Dogfish are present in numbers and even if nothing more exciting turns up you can bank on the good old LSD to keep you busy. The other anglers who fished the same mark had no success at all but they were float fishing and spinning with large paddletails. Both methods are fine where there are big pollock close to the shore but this is a mark for bottom living species.

All of this rain means there is a chance of a grilse on the spate rivers tomorrow. I wonder how many brownie points I still have in the bank?

Fishing in Ireland, fly tying

Keeping it simple

Sometimes I look at the plethora of new fly patterns which appear every year and wonder if we anglers are deluding ourselves. The latest ‘must have’ synthetic materials or the most fashionable hooks adorn the pages or screens of every angling periodical, begging us weaklings to part with hard earned cash so we too can tie up this season’s killer patterns. I’m no expert when it comes to the wider angling world but here in the West of Ireland I find the old reliables just as effective as always.

That old warrior, the Stoat’s tail still catches fish when the water is low and warm, just like it did all those years ago when it was invented. I play around with body materials just for something to do rather than any great conviction one is significantly better than the others. I like a red body on my Stoat’s for no reason other than I like the look of it. A dash of red never does any harm in my book. It looks like the colour of fins on small fish to me. The rest of the dressing remains the same though, there is no need for any flashy new bling.

We are in August now so a daddy is a likely performer. Again, I don’t get too hung up on exact patterns. A natural colour body for the browns or a silver body for the migratory lads, be they trout or salmon. Legs? Yes, and plenty of them. Hackles? long and flowing to give life. After those essentials I’m not overly pushed on the exactitude’s of the remainder of the dressing.

Tying in some legs on a silver daddy

I am more than willing to accept, and indeed revel in the tag ‘old fogie’ as at my time of life change is hard to enjoy. But my bias for the simple has been born out over the years and in all kinds of angling scenarios.

Fishing in Ireland, fly tying

Fly tying season

At this time of the year we fly tyers are as busy as beavers, crouched over the vice winding and snipping to our hearts content. After a couple of very quiet seasons I had little need to top up my fly boxes until the plan to fish all 32 counties was hatched. Now I had to make sure I was going to be fully equipped for all eventualities.

The sub plot to doing the 32 counties is that I would keep some basic fishing gear in the car with me at all times so that I could take advantage of any free time while I am travelling with work. My trusty Orvis rod and a floating line will be in the back of the car this coming season but the question is what flies do I bring with me?

It is simply not possible to cover all eventualities so I figured I would take two boxes with me, a small one with dry patterns and a larger wooden box containing anything else, be that wets, nymphs or lures. This may not be as limiting as you might imagine as I tend to stick to relatively few patterns for 90% of my fishing.

wets are at the bottom of this shot

Looking at the wet flies I can see myself stopping for a few casts at roadside loughs around the country where my quarry will be small, wild brown trout. These fish tend not to be overly fussy so some smallish bibio, bumble, invicta and dabbler flies will form the backbone of my collection for these types of waters. I will make up some other traditional style patterns too so I have something to try for a change if my regulars are not producing.

For rivers I love using spider patterns and I have loads of these already made up so I selected some and added them to the box. Mainly tied on size 14 and 16 hooks, I am fully confident they will catch me trout all across Ireland throughout the season and I would urge you all to have some of these simple but deadly flies in you armoury. There are some Wickhams, Greenwells and other similar flies in here too (all proven killers).

There may be opportunities for an hour or two on lakes stocked with rainbows and this had me reaching for the vice to knock up some lures and buzzers. I am woefully out of touch with the rainbow fishing scene, so bungs, snakes and the rest of the new-fangled patterns are not going to be considered. Instead, I will generally stick with oldies such as Cat’s Whiskers, Gold-head Daddies and Muddlers. One exception is those damned squirmy worms that everyone seems to be raving about. I have made a couple of them but my God they are annoying little yokes to whip up! The worm material itself is the devils own work to lash on to a hook. I may (or may not) persevere and make up some more.

For some reason I find tying buzzers difficult and I am never 100% happy with how my attempts to tie them turn out. I have made a start but I really need to up my game to make some decent copies. I can’t recall catching trout on buzzers of any colour other than black or claret, so my buzzer fishing needs a tune up as well as my fly tying!

spot the lures

I am not planning on carting salmon gear around in the boot of the car but I have slipped a few small grilse flies into the box too. I would hate to be in a position to fish a falling spate river for an hour and not have any flies with me. The old Orvis rod could handle grilse OK but it lacks the backbone to deal with a full grown salmon. Given that Irish grilse run from a couple of pounds up to about 5 pounds I think the trout rod can do the business if required. Anyway, some Hairy Marys and shrimps are in there too.

There are still some gaps to be filled in the double-sided box so I am going to troll through my angling books and look out for any specific regional flies which may come in useful. I am sure the wily fishers of Kerry or Wexford have their own patterns!

As a young man I used to revel in making difficult patterns. The more complex or challenging the fly the more I enjoyed tying it. I had to try out any new material that came on the market or make up the latest pattern from the monthly fishing magazines (we are talking pre-internet days). I learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed making all those weird and wonderful flies at the time. These days I find tying simple traditional flies much more satisfying and knocking out some Invictas or sooty olives gives me more pleasure than anything else. January is proving to be a happy month so far, filling the boxes and anticipating the coming season like a child before Christmas.

Fishing in Ireland

Winged PT

Here is a useful little fly that does not get the attention it deserves. I use it on the smaller loughs around here where it does well when the trout are taking midges.

Most of you will be very familiar with patterns such as the PT nymph or the hackled Pheasant Tail. These staples of the European fly fishing scene have been around for years and there can’t be many fly fishers for trout or grayling who don’t have a few tucked away in their box. By simply adding wings and playing around with the hackle and tails you can create a great fly for fishing wet during a midge hatch on still water.

I like to use red silk for making this fly and being a bit of a traditionalist I reach for a spool of crimson Pearsal gossomer , but can use whatever brand you prefer. Starting an the eye I catch in a small red game hackle. This can be cock or hen, depending on your preference. I normally use a small cock hackle. Proceed down the shank catching in a few fibres of grey or blue dun cock hackle to form the tails. A length of fine copper wire is also tied in as you run the silk down to the bend. Gold wire can be used instead if you prefer.

At the bend, catch in three fibres of cock pheasant tail which will be used for the body. Try to use some brightly coloured herl (there is some pretty awful stuff out there so keep a look out for better quality tail feathers). Now run the silk back up to where the hackle is tied in, trapping the end of the pheasant herl as you go.

Apply some varnish to the bed of silk to give the body a little extra strength. Then twist the herls into a rope and wind them in touching turns up to the hackle and tie them in with the silk. Remove the waste ends. Take the copper wire and wind it in the opposite spiral in open turns to form the ribbing. Now tie the wire in as well and remove the waste.

Wind the hackle which you previously tied in, Only a couple of turns are required as you want to keep this pattern light and delicate. Tie in and trim the waste end of the hackle in the usual manner.

Now for the wings, a pair of matching slips from starling secondary flight feathers. I know this is very old fashioned but trust me, this pattern works well with these wings on it. Don’t make the wings to broad, keep them narrow and light. All that remains is to trim the waste and whip finish a neat head before varnishing.

I prefer to fish this fly on the dropper of a wet fly cast and it does great work early in the season. It has also produced the goods for me on summer evenings. Some of you may be muttering that this is all a waste of time and that buzzer fishing will be more effective during a midge hatch. In calm conditions I would agree but here in the west of Ireland we often fish on days when the wind is a blowing hard and buzzer fishing in a wave is not much fun. Then a team of small wets come into their own and this wee fly can be a useful addition to the cast.

Claretbumbler

Fishy tales from the West of Ireland

Messing about at the vice

Goodbye old friend

Into the light

IFI

32 – Part 1. Where to start

32

All over

End of season boat lift

Time for reflection

Tip ring

Dogfish traces

Jimmy Burke cup

Red Rapalas

Littlewood

Inish Turk

Bank holiday action

Keeping it simple

Fly tying season

Winged PT

January 2020
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