Sqeezing in a session

This spring has been like no other that I can recall. This week we are again basking in high temperatures under cloudless skies and fanned by the lightest of zephers. These conditions are wonderful for so many outdoor persuits, unfortunately trout and salmon angling are not on that last. With ghillieing work consuming me from this weekend onwards and the house still requiring hours of hard graft for the foreseeable future, I badly wanted to get out with the rods despite the poor conditions. Coarse fishing seemed to offer the most likely way of putting a bend in a rod so I took myself off up the N17 today for a session in county Sligo.

Ballinascarrow has been a generous lough to me over the years, a venue with a big head of skimmers, roach and the inevitable hybrids. It has become a sort of fail safe venue, one where I go when I need to feel I am in with a good chance of bending the rods. How would today shape up?

With the house in turmoil due to the renovations, it proved to be a difficult task just to unearth some suitable gear. I wanted to bring my 11 foot float rod but it was nowhere to be seen and the same went for the Korum chair. I suspect the latter was chucked in the attic a few weeks ago and it will turn up at some unspecified point in the future, but for now I just went with my old stool instead. In the end I amassed sufficient tackle for a session and set off early under prisine blue skies. It was a relief just to be going fishing, the catch at this point being irrelevant. Toddling down the road at a sedate pace was almost enjoyable (not a phrase I generally use to describe driving in Ireland). Through the villages of east Mayo and southern Sligo, barely an hour elapsed before I crunched to a halt on the gravel car park for the lake. I felt quite proud of myself as I had not forgotten anything important for a change. I walked down to my favourite stand, the slightly wonky one past the water pumping station, and set up.

I figured a maggot feeder might be a good starting point but the leger rod was already strung with running bomb, so I just left it on and tied on a fresh hook length with a size 12 hook. Maggots hooked, I slung this simple rig a dozen yards off to my left and set up the float rod with a light waggler, a four pound hook length and a size 14 hook which was tipped with three maggots. The float had barely settled when I looked over to see the feeder rod twitching, and reeled in the first roach of the day. Not a bad start! A second roach soon followed, this time on the float, then the skimmers invaded the swim. It is easy to be disparaging when it comes to bream in general and skimmers in particular, but I don’t mind them at all. I’ve watched videos of bream in the UK being hauled in with not even the mearest flick of their tail, but Irish bream do a bit of wriggling when they feel the hook. The sun shone, the float dipped and dived, the tip of the feeder rod gave the occasional rattle and I sat grinning like a lunatic amid the glorious spring vistas around me. I’ll tell ye lads, ’tis hard to beat a good mornings session when the fish are biting in the west of Ireland!

I had planned to spend the whole day out fishing but after a couple of hours I began to feel the need to get back home and the hard work that so badly required attention. The break away for it had done wonders and I felt relaxed and ready to resume the onerous tasks ahead of me. Breaking down the rods, I slowly made my way back to the car, which by now had an interior temperature on par with your average blast furnace. I stopped to chat with a silver-haired guy who was chucking out a silver spoon, presumably for pike. My salutation was met with what turned out to be his only words of English – ‘I from Ukraine’. We tried communicating by sign language but it was tough going, so we smiled and bid each other fairwell. His mouthful of gold teeth and haunted blue eyes suggested he was a man who had seen maybe too much of the bad side of life. I hope he did catch a pike in the end.

As for me, the final catch came to ten roach, none of them better than half-a-pound in weight. Nineteen skimmers/bream made up the bulk of the bag and there were 2 small rudd, 3 hybrids and a tiny perch for good measure. I suspect my laziness cost me more fish as a change to the feeder would, I think, have prduced more bites. I was fishing pretty close in and the next time I visit this water I plan on casting further out into deeper water in search of bigger quarry. For now though, 35 fish will do me nicely.

The road home was uneventful and I am scribbling these words before setting about the sanding and painting in what will be our new kitchen by the end of next week. Angling is, quite rightly, becoming recognised as an antidote for the pressures of modern life and this morning was no exception. Just sitting watching the swallows swooping across the mirror-calm lake and concentrating on the tiny red tip of my float were healing and restorative. If, like me, you have not made the effort to get bankside lately I suggest you remedy that very soon.