Storm Amy

The first named storm of the year batters away outside. Leaves are shaken from bending trees, rainwater splatters against the windows and the sky is the colour of a nasty bruise. One year ago, when I was working, Friday afternoons saw me driving home after being away all week, often in miserable weather like todays. While I miss the financial remuneration, I certainly do not miss the driving! Apart from the racket that storm Amy is creating, it is a quiet house today. We had a bite to eat in a local restaurant last night washed down with a nice bottle of red and then indulged in a couple of drinks in town. Nothing mad now, just an evening out of the house for us both. As neither of us are big drinkers today will be subdued after subjecting our bodies to a dose of alcohol yesterday. Time to make a few flies.

My plan for the day was to tie up some salmon flies, but on reflection that might well be a complete waste of time. The 2025 salmon fishing here in Ireland was an unmitigated disaster. I see the Scottish rivers suffered long periods of very low water and that had a big effect on catches over there. Ireland faired much better when it came to rainfall and while there were dry periods there was also some excellent water levels in most of our major salmon rivers. Our problem was very simple, there are no salmon left for us anglers to fish for. The alarm bells have been ringing for many years but the Irish government simply did not want to hear about anything as unimportant to them as some fish. Every manner of restriction has been placed on anglers but nothing at all on the real culprits, agriculture and high seas over fishing. Whole river system failed to report a single salmon for the 2025 season and once prolific beats on major rivers saw only a handful of fish. Many anglers (myself included) did not bother to dust down the salmon gear as it was a pointless exercise. I am expecting all rod and line salmon fishing to be banned in 2026 in Ireland, but of course the famers can continue to pollute and the commercial fishing industry can keep sweeping the seas clean. I am well aware the corrupt Irish government will do nothing, but I don’t understand why Europe stood back and lets this ecocide happen.

Instead of salmon flies I am making a few trout patterns. An elderly black plastic fly box which had a sorry looking collection of small wets has been emptied and I will fill it with flies for the hill loughs. These are generally size 12 or 14 flies and are a mix of old and new styles. I know full well that if I just fish with a green peter, a bibio and a claret bumble I would probably catch just as many trout but it is fun to both make and fish different flies.

I started off with a few Golden Olive’s. This has always been a good fly for me and I nearly prefer it to the more commonly used Dabbler version. Tippets tail over a GloBrite no.4 floss tag, oval gold tinsel rib over a golden olive seal’s fur body and a golden olive hen hackle with a bronze mallard wing. Oddly, I find that a size 10 is by far the best size for this fly when fishing the hill loughs.

Next up was a few Yellow Owl. Maybe not a popular fly here in Ireland but it does good work during the summer months. I made up some of the standard dressing on size 12 hooks, a yellow floss body ribbed with thick black cotton thread, brown partridge hackle and tails and wing made of pale hen pheasant. Then I tied a few emergers with the same body and hackle but a wing of deer hair on a size 12 emerger style hook. The bodies on these flies look a bit scruffy because the floss I used was nearly 50 years old and pretty frayed, but I doubt if the trout will mind.

I changed tying silk from yellow to black and made a couple of Bluebottle Spiders. I’ve not tied or used this pattern for decades but it used to be good on Scottish loughs so I might try them here next year. A very simple pattern with just a dark blue silk body ribbed with thick black thread and a natural black hen hackle, all on a size 12 hook.

I had to take a break and pop into town for some provisions. Christmas stock is now on the shelves of our local Tesco, competing for space with the Halloween tat. I guess I am just a bad tempered old man but this sort of endless commercialism just sickens me. I’m not religious, but surely Christmas is about the coming of the saviour, not plastic trinkets shipped from sweat shops in the far east? Anyway, I bought the cat food and milk and returned home through the deluge and strengthening wind.

Back at the vice, I gave some old Rory Gallagher albums a spin as I looked out some materials and hooks for the next patterns.

The Silver Invicta is a fly I can never seem to find in my fly box. There are some in there alright, but laying my hands on them while fishing usually proves to be just too difficult for me. So, I tied up some on size 10 hooks. My logic was simply that if I had enough of them in the box I stood a better chance of locating them when required. You all know the dressing so I won’t bore you with that detail, suffice to say I use the standard dressing and fish it after the mayfly is done.

While I was at it, I also tied a few Silver Invicta Bumbles. This is the same as the original pattern but without the wings and with a brown partridge hackle wound between the body hackle and the blue Guinea Fowl feather. I was going to add a few legs to these but my wee bag of knotted cock pheasant herl is empty, meaning I have to endure a session of making overhand knots in old feathers. Not a job I like, but buying pre-knotted feathers is too expensive for me.

The wind is blowing hard by 4pm, hearty gusts bending the small trees and bushes. Squally rain comes and goes, water runs across the road outside forcing even Irish drivers to slow down. So far, it has not been too bad, just your typical Autumn storm for the west of Ireland. With the wind and rain likely to persist until the middle of Saturday I’ll take the opportunity of being stuck indoors to make some more flies. I keep putting it off, but I really need to start tying more dry flies.