Irelands a very strange place, isn’t it? I know this is not news but today just brought it home to me how odd my adopted home is. Immersed as I am in a welter of tasks which I can’t seem to complete, I decided a few hours coarse fishing might clear my mind a bit. So I set off for one of my favourite places, Ballinascarrow lough near Ballymote in county Sligo. Everything loaded in the car, I hit the road before the lunacy of the school run, only to have to turn back when I remembered that the pint of maggots was still in the bait fridge at home. At least I had not gone to far before my limited memory kicked in!
Not a breath of wind stirred the nearly naked trees as I covered the road and the miles to Ballymote. The final mile is along boreen which has been patched countless times and the poor old car was hopping from one badly covered pothole to the next in a bone jarring fashion. Once stopped in the grassy carpark I unloaded and put the barrow together to make the short walk to the fishing stands a bit easier. The dead stillness of Mayo was replaced here with a stiff breeze, something I was none to keen to see. Off I plodded down the path, negotiating the pair of gates with all the elegance of a hippo. Anyway, I got to the stands in one piece and surveyed the scene.
The mysterious wind was coming across the stands at about 45 degrees from my left, and, while not ideal, it was fishable. My chair is slightly bigger than some on the market and the stands at this lough are on the narrow side, so there was only just enough room for the Korm S23 to sit with a few inches to spare. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous in case one of the legs of the chair slipped off the stand, catapulting yours truly into the water. The lough was still high despite a recent dry spell, with scarcely an inch of freeboard between the stand and the water.
A 9 foot leger rod with a simple five gram bomb weight and a size 16 spade end on a four pound hook length was baited with a pair of red maggots and tossed out. I loose fed more maggots over the hook and let it be, propped up on my tackle bag. The float rod still had a waggler on it from my last outing so I figured I could use it again here once a new hooklength had been added. I size 16 to four pound was quickly looped on and I was fishing. All of this setting up took maybe 10 minutes, but during that short space of time the wind had veered round so that it was now blowing directly in my face. And there it would remain for the whole session, increasing in strength but not wavering from the quarter it was in now.
With the benefit of hindsight, I should have changed the float for a heavier one. The time taken would have been minimal and it would have made the session much more pleasant for me. Instead, I took the lazy option and fished on with a float which was not man enough for being cast into the wind. The first 4 casts all produced a fish, so that initial success was to me a vindication of my slovenly approach. A brace of skimmers and another brace of roach was a great start alright, each falling for double maggot under the waggler. Just as I was congratulating myself on my excellent angling the bites stopped abruptly. Twenty minutes or so passed without so much as a nibble, then along came a small roach, followed by two more slightly plumper ones. I was fishing hard for these small fish. Casting into the gusting wind was not easy and many casts ended up a long way from where I was aiming!
All this time the leger had been quiet apart from a single rattling bite which I failed to convert. Then I saw a good, firm knock on the leger. Just as I laid down the float rod which in my hand, the leger reel screeched, the rod whipped around and then took off towards the lough like a harpoon being fired at a whale. I am far from agile these days, but somehow I flung myself over and grabbed the last couple of inches of the rod butt in my left hand before it sank into the water. Any wicket keeper would have been proud of the way I got down low to the on side to make the catch! Stangely, the line was limp when I lifted the rod and reeling in I found the hook was missing. I have a theory that a roach had taken the hook and was then pounced on by a pike who ran off and bit through the hooklength. That has happened to me before so I am sticking to this unproven explanation. As further proof of my pike theory, the swim went totally dead for the next half hour.
Reaching into the bag for my coffee and sandwiches, I came up partly empty handed. Yes, the sandwich box was there but the coffee was not – I had left it in the car of course. I swear I am getting more and more forgetful with each passing day. So the dry sandwich was munched without the warming comfort of an accompanying drink. I had wrapped up well enough for the day that was in it, but there was something about that wind, an edge to it which chilled me to the core. Only in Ireland can you get such variable weather a few miles apart.
The roach came back on again briefly and I landed two more on the float, both solid little 9 inchers. All too soon though the bites dried up and it was just me and the wind facing off. I gave it a while longer but in truth the fight had gone out of me. Carefully, I took the rods apart and manoeuvred the gear back on to dry land where the chair was converted back to a trolley. I do like this chair and the way I can make it into a trolley so easily. My initial scepticism, born form parting with so much money for it, has dissipated and it has proved to be a sound investment. Heavy, yes. Awkward sometimes, yes. Comfortable and practical, definitely.
Car loaded and divested of my outer garments, I found the errant coffee which was still warm and ferreting around in the pockets of an old fleece on the back seat I came across a forgotten bar of chocolate. Sometimes the smallest of victories provide the greatest pleasure, so there I sat sipping luke warm coffee and munching a bar while I watched the sheep in the next field, the farmer busy in an ancient Massey Ferguson moving bales and a buzzard quartering the edge of a wood. Insignificant goings on, but very grounding for me.
Returning to Castlebar, I asked Helen how bad the wind had been? Not a breath had stirred the leaves in the garden all day. Only in Ireland……………….
Claretbumbler 