Corgar

As promised, I headed off for a spot of coarse fishing today. The trout fishing on the western loughs is poor to say the least so I figured I would get back into the float and feeder game again. Anyone with any sense would have picked a venue close at hand for their first session of the year but when did I ever do anything sensible? With the car packed from the previous evening, I set off for Lough Corgar on the far side of county Leitrim.

The roads were busy as far as Carrick-on-Shannon, perhaps because of the elections which were on yesterday. Counting the votes takes many days here due to the PR system of transferring votes. While I personally have no interest in Irish politics it does seem to excite the general population. I stopped off to buy some maggots then headed across the undulating landscape for another 25 kilometres to Ballinamore which was bustling with tractors, trailers full of sheep and the good folks of the parish doing their shopping. A little way outside the village I turned down a narrow boreen with a lough on each side. My chosen venue lay to the right, the near circular lake barely visible due to the wide reed beds which surround it.

Today was going to be a bit of an experiment. Over the winter I noticed not one, but two of the stand off rings on my venerable ABU float rod were broken. With no spares to hand I decided to buy a cheap replacement rod and ended up getting a new feeder rod too from the nice people at the Glasgow Angling Centre. The float rod is a Korum Phase 1 and the feeder is made by Leeda, both measuring in at 11 feet. I had forgotten just how much gear I bring with me on days like this, or how heavy it all is. Once togged up and fully loaded I set off across styles and bridges to get to the first of two stands on the edge of the lough. A strong wind blew across me from left to right, not ideal for the float. I set up the rods.

With such a strong wind blowing I decided to fish close in. No point in trying to chuck a float into a gale. A biggish waggler fished slightly over depth and a size 14 barbless hook felt about right. Three maggots were duly hooked and I made my first cast. Next I set up the feeder rod with a twizzled boom to a 20 gramme black cap maggot feeder and a size 12 hook on 5 inches of 4 pound nylon. I fired the feeder off to my right then settled down to await developments.

A ten minute wait was rewarded with a healthy rattle on the feeder rod which turned out to be a good sized skimmer. Next the float lifted and another, similar sized skimmer came to hand. A middling sized hybrid fell to the float, soon followed by a tiny roach. And so it went on, the sport was steady but not hectic. The float was catching more that the feeder by roughly 4:1 but I was missing quite a few bites. A lull in activity could be addressed by some fresh balls of groundbait and some loose fed maggots. That wind, annoyingly strong to begin with, increased further then swung around to the East, blowing right in my face. The fish seemed to go off the feed with that change in the wind and the bites slowed up considerably from then on. I fshed on but the afternoon was a shadow of the morning in terms of numbers of bites to both rods. With chores to be done at home I packed it in about 3pm and trudged over the fields to where the car was parked.

So what did I learn today? Both new rods were really nice to fish with, light in the hand and well able to cope with my styles of fishing. I had planned to use my Mitchell Avocet on the feeder but somehow it wound up on the float rod instead. It is too heavy for that rod but I won’t make that basic error again. My rig boards need to be tidied up and a better range of lengths and hook sizes prepared before I fish again. That seatbox needs to be cleared out too, it weighs a bloody ton! Today was very much a ‘shake down’ trip, a warm up session to get me back into the right place for my summer of coarse fishing. The dozen or so assorted skimmers, hybrids and roach as just the beginning of what I hope to be a busy and productive few months on the bank.

Corgar is a really nice lough to fish with a pair of well tended double stands to fish off. I have never tried its twin lake across the road, lough Bolgard. It reputedly holds some big bream so I must give it a try sometime soon. In fact, the whole of that area around the village of Ballinamore is dotted with lakes containing roach, bream and tench. You will be reading more about them here as the year advances.