A trying few weeks

While I have not been fishing myself, I have been out on the western loughs most days since the beginning of May. As a ghillie I have been able to observe first hand the decline in our stillwater fisheries and a pretty bleak picture has emerged for the much vaunted mayfly season. It would be charitable to say it was poor.

My clients ranged from complete beginners to highly experienced anglers with many decades of knowledge to fall back on. Without exception, all of them found the angling tough. I know that some spots on the loughs fished well in short bursts, but in general the trout were not free rising. Mayfly hatched in small numbers with only a very rare day when the hatch was strong. Of course, the weather played a big part on some days and flat calms seemed to be a common problem. More worryingly, it was the very low catches on days when the weather was nearly perfect for fly fishing which really caused me concern. Good anglers fished diligently over excellent drifts but they met with very little success.

It was not all doom and gloom and some lovely days were enjoyed and a few trout came to the net. Wets were more consistent then dries, presumably because of the lack of insects. I can’t recall seeing a single trout caught on a dibbled bob fly, instead fairly long casts with sinking lines was the most productive technique. I saw a lot of anglers using flies with booby eyes but they did not catch any fish on my boat.

So why was the mayfly so poor this season? The lack of fly was obviously a big factor and what is causing the rapid decline in this iconic species needs to be investigated. Pollution is probably the most likely cause with the never ending flow of slurry into our waterways bound to be a major factor. Predation by the explosive increase in coarse fish in the loughs may be another issue. Vast shoals of bream and roach now live and feed in the western loughs, fish which have to be eating a big chunk of the invertebrate biomass therein. The unusually wet winter and early spring is possibly an influence on the mayfly, the high and cold water might have been a problem for the nymphs in their burrows.

It is not just the mayfly which failed to appear in any great quantity. Usually I see the tail end of the Lake Olive hatch overlapping the mayfly but there were precious few olives around last month. The sedges which hatch out around now are conspicuous by their absence. In short, there was little for the trout to rise too and they stayed feeding on the bottom instead.

The mayfly is over now and the loughs are quiet, the visitors have packed up and headed home with tales of disappointment. Only the buzzer fishers or trollers found steady sport and indeed, there were some big trout landed on those methods. Talking to those who make a living servicing the needs of visiting anglers it is clear bookings were well down on last season. Given the poor mayfly of 2024 it is hard to see any likelihood of in improvement next May. When you add the exorbitant cost of everything here in Ireland to the poor fishing it is hard to sell the mayfly when anglers have so many other options open to them. It has been a grim season so far and all we can do is hope for an improvement this summer.