Fog on the Shannon

With another storm due to hit us on Friday, I decided to sneak out once again with the rods before the weather deteriorated. It’s been cold and foggy for the past couple of days and Wednesday was promised the same, maybe not ideal conditions but not the worst either. Roach would again be the target but this time I back-tracked and invested in some maggots, meaning the bread and corn would be relegated to the bench this time around.

Arthritis, my every present foe, has now presented itself in my right shoulder. To be honest it’s been niggling away at that joint for about a year now but it was only last week that the pain got significantly worse. X-rays last summer confirmed ‘extensive damage’ to the shoulder which would require surgery to fix. Me and the medical profession don’t really see eye-to-eye, so I tend to put off anything drastic for as long as possible and try to find alternatives to the drugs and scalpel. I rested the shoulder last week and massaged it to try to get the blood flowing to the aching joint, either or both of which seemed to have calmed the angry pain a little bit for now. Would it be sufficient to allow me to fish in comfort though?

I took my time before setting off as there was thick fog blanketing the town and I had no desire to risk life and limb on the N5 in those conditions. The murk had lifted a little by ten o’clock and I drove down to Carrick-on-Shannon through banks of mist, clear patches and the odd heavy shower. I had toyed with the idea of returning to the canal at Keshcarrigan but instead opted for the Shannon and specifically the mooring below the bridge in the town of Carrick itself. The backwater there tends to hold fish at this time of year and anyway, this is the only time an angler can get a bit of peace on the otherwise busy pontoon.

Clutching my tub of red maggots as if it was the ark of the covenant, I made my way along the fog shrouded riverbank to the substantial floating pontoon and then to my chosen spot. The river is about 100 yards wide here but instead of casting into the main river I would be fishing inside the pontoon. There is a backwater here, a natural holding area for coarse fish when the river is high and cold. It does not look much I will grant you, just a few yards of open water in front of the hotel and almost enclosed by withered reeds. Setting up the 11 foot Korum float rod I plumbed the area immediately in front of me to get a feel for the bottom. There was about five feet of cold, clear water just out from where I set up the chair with a small but still discernible drop off slightly to my left. That was where I started to loose feed a trickle of the precious red maggots. Not too many now, the cold water means the fish won’t eat much as I didn’t want to fill them up with freeby maggots. The loose feed had to be thrown in about three yards to my right as there was a flow coming from that direction.

I clipped on a small little waggler, figuring that even though bites might be hard to see, I would be fishing very close in. A six inch hook length of 4 pound fluorocarbon to a mirco-barb size 18 completed the rig and so thus armed I set about my business. A small pinch of maggots chucked in every third or fourth cast felt about right and a single maggot on the wee hook looked OK to my eyes. Right from the start there were bites, timid affairs where the float sort of bobbled but did not dive, bites which usually came to nothing or saw me hooking a small roach only for it to throw the hook before it came to hand. Finally, after about 20 minutes of these shenanigans, I landed my first fish of 2025, a 6 inch roach.

Another couple of similar sized roach came along but I was missing a lot of bites, so I decided to change the hook. Off came the mirco-barb and in its place I tied on a barbless wide gape size 18. That seemed to be a positive move as I began to land fish most casts. All were roach until the float was dragged under by something with a bit of weight. This one required the net and it turned out to be a feisty hybrid of around three-quarters of a pound in weight. I have a real soft spot for hybrids, they are such hard fighters compared to most other coarse species. A quick snap and off it went back into the freezing cold river.

The cold, dampness of the day turned to proper rain for a while before reverting back to dankness and mist. That cold was really seeping into me as I sat on the pontoon but I was able to push my discomfort to the back of my mind as I was catching fish. For a while it was virtually a fish every chuck, mostly small roach but three more solid hybrids livened up proceedings as the grey morning turned to an equally neutral coloured afternoon. I switched between a single maggot and impaling two at a time on the size 18, but I can’t say one was better than the other. Then, for no obvious reason, the bites simply stopped. A good half-an-hour passed without so much as a nibble before there was a return to the tentative bites of the morning. I suspect a pike may have appeared in the swim, so sudden was the change in my fortunes.

The sport never did return to hectic bites, instead the action petered out over the next hour. Maybe it was because I had nothing to distract me but the cold felt much more, with my hands in particular being reduced to numbness. I stuck it out for a while but in the end I decided the combination of not many bites and the freezing cold were not worth the effort, so I packed up and trudged off back down the pontoon. I had absolutely no complaints about my three hour session, with a total of 28 fish to hand. Two dozen silvery roach and four solid hybrids on a cold January day seemed to be a good return to me. It was of course particularly nice the catch my first fish of the year. The longer that I go without catching anything the more it plays on my mind. Thinking back to my salmon fishing days the need to land that first springer used to keep me awake at nights. Thank God for the usually willing roach!

I am at home writing this post, the fire glowing and a cat curled up next to me, softly purring. I usually leave writing until the next day but I am intending on changing that when possible to jotting down these reports sooner, while the memories are still fresh in my mind. Today was, in many ways, a typical early season outing for me. Short, slotted into a busy life, focused on float rather than feeder. The storm which is due to hit here on Friday will prevent any more angling for a few days so I will have time to dry off my gear and have the tackle ready for next week when I hope to venture forth once again. There is a certain rhythm to winter fishing for me which I like, it isn’t as hectic as my trout fishing, not as intense as my salmon fishing. I find it deeply contemplative, soothing and fulfilling.

Did my change in hook design really make a difference? Or did the fish just start to feed more confidently? I guess I will never know but over the past few seasons I have tried many different hooks and think there are times when one type is better than others. There will be more experimenting this year! Indeed, I have rig boards made up full of different hook lengths and hooks just to allow mw to try out some ideas.

My shoulder was not great all day. I don’t talk about my arthritis much, believing moaning about it is not what others want to listen to. It came to me when I was a young man in my mid-thirties. My right ankle burst into a ball of red hot pain one evening after I had been hill walking. By the next day it has eased but it soon became apparent that there was something wrong as from then on I was getting the same agonising episodes every time I did some serious walking. Scans at the local hospital revealed inflammation and wear of the ankle joint and the news I had arthritis. Since then the disease has spread to most major joints in my body which in turn means I am in constant pain. The level of pain varies greatly but I’m never pain free. At it’s worst I have been almost unable to walk and dealing with pain takes its toll on you in many other ways, including your mental health. Of course I have tried all the remedies and cures but none of the anti-inflammatories, pain killers, injections into the joints or supports did much to help. Changing to a vegetarian diet is the only thing which reduced the level of pain for me. This latest escalation of the pain in my right shoulder is very worrying as it is going to have a huge impact on my angling, and in particular my fly fishing. I might have to shelve my dislike of the white coated brigade and let them at me with their array of shiny, sharp tools after all.