I do like Mondays

Fishing on Monday evening has now become a ‘thing’ for me. I stay in digs each Monday night so I make use of the free time between the end of my working day and darkness by fishing somewhere in the Irish midlands. This Monday I decided to re-visit an old haunt and do a bit of coarse fishing on the Royal canal near the sleepy little town of Ballymahon.

Over the past couple of years I have explored much of the western end of the Royal as it weaves across county Longford. Some stretches have been more productive than others but in general it is fair to say the canal holds a good head of fish so some sort is likely if you fish it properly. By that I mean follow the basics like stealth on the towpath, fish reasonably fine and be willing to move if the fishing is slow. Other than that, the fishing is pretty basic and the canal does not require a particularly technical approach (which suits a non-technical angler like me). It might be a canal, but these are wild fish and not stocked ones so natural baits are my preferred option.

Turning off the busy Athlone to Cavan road, my little Yaris crunched along the narrow boreen leading to a tiny car park by the canal at Ballybrannigan harbour around half past five. Previous trips here saw me set up on the eastern end of the harbour but I decided to try the western end instead this time around. No great deliberation or poring over reams of documents led me to this change, I just fancied giving the other end a whizz. Car locked, I swung my gear on to my back and walked a few yards to a small berth which made a wonderful stand to fish from. A mam and two kids were feeding the ducks off to my right while two auld fellas loudly discussed the news and gossip from around the parish over a wall behind me. Your normal rural Irish summer evening.

Westerly winds rippled the surface but unlike most of my days on the water this year it was neither too strong not too cold. Getting myself sorted out took a few minutes but I was soon fishing the waggler in the usual three feet of water with maggots on a size 14 hook. Those maggots were bought earlier that day and when I asked for reds I was told the shop only had mixed colours, so here I was picking out the red ones and using the whites and yellows as loose feed over my ground bait. When checking the bait fridge at home on Sunday I found the remains of my previous box of maggots. Lifting the lid, I found to my surprise they had not all pupated and some very lively week old reds therein were also taken along for tonight.

Right from the off the fish were in a very cooperative mood, at least as far as bites were concerned. Turning those offers into fish on the bank proved to be a different proposition, at least in the beginning. I dismissed my missing the first two bites as me just warming up. The third bite produced a small roach then I missed a succession of nips, nibbles and knocks before finally setting the hook in an absolute thumper of a roach which was well over a pound. A quiet spell then took over and maybe 15 minutes went by before a lovely bite was again missed by yours truly. Time to make a change, so off came the size 14 and I replaced it with – another size 14 but this time a different style of hook. I’d love to sound really professional and say this hook was a such-and-such, specialist, high carbon etc, but I can’t recall what is was, only that it was a fine wire jobbie. At the same time, I cut the number of impaled maggots down to two reds.

Whether my hook change was the catalyst for my upcoming change in fortunes is debateable, but one hell of a lot of bites followed and now a high percentage of them came to hand. First it was a shoal of hybrids that came into the swim followed by some roach. A huge rudd was in the middle of that lot along with a couple of less well proportioned specimens of the same species. A smallish tench livened things up a bit too. It was all going quite swimmingly until the weather took a change for the worse. A heavy mist came rolling in from the west, that drenching, clinging, cold mist which only seems to occur in Ireland. Turning my back to the grey drops, I fished on in grim determination, even as the bites slowed up, then finally stopped.

It’s a busy spot, this harbour. Cyclists, joggers, dog walkers and ramblers all enquired how many fish I had caught, with some stopping for a brief chat. One strongly built fella with a central European accent stopped and started to tell me I was fishing in the wrong place. He had caught dozens of tench not far from here. Exactly where this hot spot was he would not divulge and I didn’t press him any further. He asked about my tackle and bait and nodded approvingly until I said that red maggots were my favourite. ‘No, white is best here’ was his unequivocal reply. Off he sauntered, leaving me hunched in the rain to ponder his words. He could be a bull shitter who just liked to hear his own voice or perhaps he was a local guru with endless knowledge of the harbour and how to fish it. Beads of water ran down my waterpoofs and the world shrank into shades of silvery grey, the orange tip of the float barely discernible in the murk. What the hell, I’ll try white ones for a while.

Time seemed to slow down for me in my waterlogged gear and clothes on the edge of the canal, and any faith in the pairs of white maggots now being employed was rapidly fraying. After a while the mist lifted enough for me to take my hood down but it remained uncomfortably clammy. My mind was cycling through that ‘one last cast’ process where we are willing the fish to bite but know we should be packing up. The umpteenth cast made, I detected a slight tremble of the waggler and miraculously lifted into a shimmering golden flanked rudd. Quickly released, a much, much bigger rudd grabbed the white maggots before they even got to the bottom on the very next cast. A terrific fish of easily a pound and a quarter, it made me instantly forget the rivulet of water which had found its way inside my jacket and was running down my neck.

Reinvigorated, I fed the swim with a pinch of maggots after each consecutive fish, and there were a lot of them! A second and then a third tench bent the rod and I lost another one which threw the hook during the fight. Roach, hybrids, small rudd and even a nice perch dragged the float under and wriggled or fought their way to me depending on size. In the middle of this mayhem that saturating mist returned but I stuck it out and kept reeling them in. Fading light finally brought an abrupt end to sport, which was probably just as well as I was far from my digs and had not eaten since lunchtime. Half a dozen unmolested casts told me it really was time to go so I took the slimy rod down, shouldered the bag of gear and headed for the car. Stuffing the whole caboodle in the back of the Toyota, I exchanged pleasantries with a jogger dressed in electric blue. ‘Catch any?’ ‘A few small ones’. Off he loped in the direction of Abbyshrule, quickly disappearing in the mist, no doubt questioning his own sanity as much as mine being out on a wet night like this. Oh, and as always, I broke yet another float as I was packing up.

Threading my way along twisty back roads in that forgotten land of south county Longford and the arse end of Westmeath, I counted my many blessings. The evening had been productive with lots of fish and a few really good ones. Sessions like this are to be cherished, rewards for sticking it out when common sense tells you to pack it in. On winter nights I’ll look back on my Monday evenings, small whisky in my hand and the cats curled up beside me, recalling the dipping of the float, fat olive green tench sliding into my net or even that conversation with the guru of Ballybrannigan.  Memories are indeed made of this stuff.

For me the jury is still out on the topic of colour when it comes to maggots. I usually and unquestioningly buy a pint of red. Monday night has got me thinking though and maybe other colours might give me an advantage. Here in Ireland ‘mixed’ means some red, white and yellow in one tub, but if you keep them in the fridge for a few days they all turn a sort of pinky colour. I’m toying with buying a half pint of red and another half pint of mixed the next time, just to hedge my bets.

There will be a short hiatus in my angling as I head for the UK next week and a long overdue visit to family in Scotland. I’ll also indulge my long forgotten youth and attend the Cropredy festival with my mate Chris when I’m over there. Three days and nights of music, warm beer and damp camping in an Oxfordshire field in the company of 20,000 aging hippies. I’ll enjoy it all enormously but will no doubt miss my Monday evening jaunts to fish the quiet places down the backroads of middle Ireland.