It feels like life has just conspired against my attempts to go fishing for many months now. It’s been one thing after another, the house, the weather or my health (or all three on some occasions). Even as lately as this week my plans to fish on Thursday were scuppered and I spent the day working on the house renovations instead of casting flies at rising trout. It took the intervention of my mate to drag me to lough Conn on the second day of May. So we met up on the shores of the lough under a shifting sky and chilled by a fresh northerly wind. Mayflies had been hatching for nearly three weeks by now and the expectation was the trout wiould be keyed into the greendrakes. The plan was to fly fish but we took along trolling rods as a back up in the unlikely event there were some salmon in the lake.
Lough Mask was almost certainly a better bet, given it has been fishing its socks off for the last week, but there was a friends boat to be moved to Conn and my newly repaired oars to be reunited with my boat in Brown’s Bay, so we plumped for Conn and left the Mask for another day. Anyway, I had been speaking to Ian Wise the previous evening and he told me that Conn was beginning to fish and was worth a try. That is how it is when you live in the area, snippets of angling news are always circulating and this information is often the difference between us locals catching fish and visitors having little success.
With the water levels up a bit after recent rain, we headed up to the point of Massbrook and drifted on a small wave over the usual spots. One solitory mayfly was all I saw and of the trout there was no sign. Maybe a spot of trolling was in order as we could cover some ground and watch out for rising fish while the baits trailed behind us. Our baits fluttered enticingly all the way from Victoria north up into Castlehill, but the fish showed no interest in them at all. Once in Castlehill we swithced back to the fly rods and flogged the water there for an hour whithout seeing any action. This was proving to be tougher than expected! With no fly and certainly no fish in Castlehill I decided to keep heading north and we motored up as far as Bog Bay.
The thin layer of clouds had burned off and the day was now very bright and warming up. A scant few mays were hatching out in the shallow bay when we arrived and we fished hard for half-a-dozen drifts. I rose one small trout but did not connect and Ben rose a couple, again without feeling them at all. I was running out of ideas by now but decided to run over to the Woodford Shallows and try our luck there. Just as we drifted past the eastern point of the shallows I had a take, but the trout rolled and thrashed on the surface and threw the hook. At least it was some action even if I didn’t land it. A few more spots along the western shore were fished but without so much as a nibble. By now it was after 3pm and time to start heading back down the lough.
Ben had a phone call form one of the other lads who had seen we were out fishing. That boat had gone in already without having seen a trout let alone hooked one. They had seen a salmon rolling down at Massbrook so we motored down there for one last troll. Needless to say that didn’t work out, the only action was on my rod when a trout of a couple of pounds grabbed my bait but shook off the hooks at the side of the boat. We called it a day and returned to the bay where there was some work required lifting and mooring boats.
In many ways it had been a disappointing day but just getting out on the water made it enjoyable for me. My damaged arm was sore after the fishing, but that was to be expected. The pain was bearable and I have maybe 80% movement, so I’m hoping to be back to normal in a few weeks.
Claretbumbler 