Shannon Harbour revisited

When I was careering around Ireland like a lunatic a few years ago doing my ’32 counties’ project, I visited Shannon Harbour and caught a handful of fish in truly horrific conditions. The wind and rain that day still remain vivid in my memory, colouring my view of the place. Perhaps it was time to give this popular spot a second chance? I had a few hours to myself after work on Monday so I loaded some gear in to the car and checked on half a pint of maggots which were chilling in the bait fridge at home. Enough of them had probably survived to allow for what I had planned, so all that remained was to escape from work at a reasonable hour and drive the forty miles or so around the middle of Ireland.

What makes Shannon Harbour so interesting is its location. The Shannon flows gently past and is joined by the river Brosna and the Grand canal. Where these three waterways converge you can fish from a slippery and eroded bank for roach and perch with the off chance of bream or tench to spice things up. Anglers from all over Ireland and the UK fish here and it does get quite busy some times. I was hoping the cool, wet and breezy weather on Monday would deter the hoards and I would be able to find a wee spot for myself.

One of the most common species in the canals and rivers here is the perch, an obliging little fish that usually shows up in my catches. The problem is that perch caught on traditional coarse fishing methods are all very small. Tiny Perch love maggots and worms but the bigger ones ignore these baits, probably because they have switched on to a diet of fry and smaller fish. While it will only ever be a minor tactic for me, I have become interested in lure fishing specifically for perch. Over the past few months I have been building up my stocks of soft plastics for perch fishing, but unfortunately the heavily weeded nature of the canals this year mean that drop shotting would not be an option for me on Monday. Instead, I’d float fish with maggots on one rod and leger sweetcorn with another, hoping to catch some roach. The decision to go back to trying sweetcorn is one I had been mulling over for a while. Regular readers know I have found it to be useless in the past, but, aware I was becoming a one-trick-pony, it seemed I should push myself to experiment a bit more with different baits. A tin of yellow kernels were packed, and so armed I set off under a sky of soggy battleship grey.

Mercifully, the rain stopped just as I pulled up in a newly tarred carpark beside the last lock on the canal. As I was unloading all my gear and donning my waterproofs, a handful of cars and vans appeared and roughly parked up around me. The occupants obviously knew each other and small groups stood around chatting as I loaded my last bits and pieces on to my barrow. Between me and the rough track down to my chosen peg was parked a maroon coloured Skoda, beside which a youngish woman stood. I recall being struck by the fact her fashionable coat was exactly the same shade as the car, then she whipped said outer garment off, revealing a brightly coloured swimming costume. Bear in mind that I am dressed like Nanook of the North, resplendent in thick fleece jacket, a waistcoat, wellies, oilskin trousers and oilskin jacket. The woman apologised for blocking my way and side stepped me, giggling at my discomfort. A glance behind me unsettled me even further as easily twenty other ladies were by now also dressed in just their swimming togs. I rushed off down the field, wondering what parallel universe I had inadvertently stumbled into.

A few hundred yards towards the Shannon there are a couple of pegs and it was here that I set up. Just as I had the leger rod ready to cast a small orange boat came puttering down my side of the canal. The lady in the boat shouted over to me to ask if I had a line in the water. ‘Not yet’ I replied and finally I could see what was going on. The ladies were in the water, swimming gently downstream, each with a brightly coloured float attached to them. God bless them, I am damn sure nothing would have persuaded me to strip off and swim in that filthy water. But they swam serenely on past where I stood, still deep in conversation with each other. One straggler was 40 or 50 yards behind and had a fella in a kayak minding her, but soon she too had slipped out of sight and heading for the big river. OK, time to concentrate on my fishing.

Eschewing my normal feeder, I set up a simple running leger and baited the size 12 hook with corn on a hair rig. Lobbed up and across the current, it was left in peace while I put the float rod up. I knew from my last visit to this exact spot the water was going to be deep, so I carefully plumbed up and set a crystal waggler to fish slightly over depth. In front of me there was about 12 feet of water, but twenty yards downstream the bottom shallowed to nearer 9 feet. Another size 14 hook snelled to a four pound hooklength felt appropriate and that was soon cast into the middle of the canal with a pair of red maggots wriggling enticingly.

The rain may have stopped but that wind got up again, gusting and switching direction. Since I had my brolly with me I set it up and angled it to shelter me in some manner from the wind, a rouse which worked out quite well. Lacking any ground bait (I had forgotten to pack it), I kept up a steady stream of loose fed maggots, pinging them in with a catapult. And so I settled down to quietly fish and take in my surroundings. Late summer is coloured deep green here in Ireland. Crows wheeled and cawed above and a pair of mallards swam up and down in front of me the whole session, but otherwise I saw no other birds or animals.

Maybe 20 minutes slipped away before the float wiggled and dipped, resulting in a nice roach coming to hand. Two more fell off then a somewhat smaller roach snaffled my maggots. All this time I had been periodically winding in the leger, re-baiting with fresh corn then casting it back out again. No fishy bites on the bottom rig so far, but I did catch something on the leger. While winding in to check the bait I snagged on the bottom. Not an unusual occurrence when bottom fishing but there was something not quite right. when I applied a bit of pressure I was able to recover a little line. Some gentle persuasion eventually led to whatever I had hooked giving up and I was able to recover all my tackle. Wrapped around my hook was a length of heavy line, so I tugged at it until out came 20 yards on old mono and a homemade lure of some sort. I tucked the line and lure into may bag for safety and examined it closely when I got home. Twisted wire held a clevis, on which was mounted a gold size 2 blade. On the end was a treble hook and some lead wire had been wrapped on too. The interesting thing for me though was the articulated head which was a flattened ball of lead on a seperate piece of wire. It is clear that a bit of work had gone into making this lure and I am left wondering if it had caught any fish? I don’t think I will be adding it to my own lue box, but it is interesting to see what other fishers are using.

There was a quiet spell until the faintest of bites produced what would turn out to be the first fish of a reasonably consistent period of catching small roach. Mixed in with the silvers was a small perch. There always has to be a tiddler of a perch, doesn’t there? The evening slipped away far too quickly and the light began to fade way sooner than I had expected. The leger had not registered a single bite on the corn, so for the last cast I loaded the hook with white maggots. Barely 5 minutes elapsed before there was tell-tale rattle on the tip and a nice healthy roach was mine. The decision to call it a day triggered a wave of exhaustion in me and it took an almighty effort to break down the rods and pack all the gear on to the barrow/chair and head for the car.

In the end, I had landed 11 roach and the baby perch. Not hectic sport I’ll grant you, but just what I had wanted to chill out after work. Catching a few roach on the float was fairly standard, but the leger/sweetcorn fiasco was a bit disappointing. That was only compounded by catching a fish on the maggot on my final cast. I am going to persevere with alternative baits though, life is too short to fish with just maggots alone. It would be like me fly fishing for trout but only using one fly. I need to improve my technique and understand where I am going wrong because plenty of other anglers swear by sweetcorn as bait.

I treated myself to a new hook length box last week, a neat little grey hard plastic job. This is a positive move for me as my old rig boards are a mess with all manner of hooklengths mixed through each other in a total guddle. Now I just need to sit down and tie up my preferred hooks and fill the box. I lack the concentration to spend hours at that task, so instead I will tie up a few at a time. By my reckoning, I will only squeeze another 4 or 5 Monday evening sessions in before the early darkness makes it difficult/dangerous to venture out with float and feeder. I will miss these sessions, there is always some learning to be had when I am by the water.