Mucking about in Sligo

A tough day ghillieing on a very quiet lough Conn on Wednesday left me wondering where I could fish on Friday. My hopes of doing a bit of trout fishing were dashed so I needed a plan B and plumped for a spot of coarse angling in county Sligo. Ruggedly beautiful Sligo may not be the first county that springs to mind when talking about Irish coarse fishing but I have generally done OK on a handful of loughs up that way.

Ardrea is a boomerang shaped wee lough just outside the town of Ballymote. I’ve fished it before and caught rudd, roach, bream and hybrids, plus some bonus perch and an impressively large eel. Tench are allegedly present but I have never seen one, so I was sceptical to say the least and was not going to target tench specifically. If one happened along then well and good, but I was really hoping for a few good sized hybrids.

The last time I visited this lough I had an awful time to get from the road to the bank. Not seeing any obvious route I hopped a barbed wire fence then dropped about 8 feet down a sheer embankment to get into the field. Getting back up at the end of that session was akin to tackling an SAS assault course. This time though I walked a bit further along the road, found a gate and accessed the field from there. In fact, the gate was open, so I strolled through and then across a very rough pasture to one of the stands. There are three of these wooden structures, but the most westerly one was a bit overgrown so I bypassed that one and moved to the one in the middle. I am not sure why, but this stand was decidedly wonky with the whole thing slanting towards the water. Gingerly, I walked out on to it to test how secure this contraption was. It didn’t sway or wobble, so reckoning I could fish from it in relative safety I set up the float rod which would turn out to be my first mistake of the day.

I’ve got very lazy this season when it comes to selection of gear and on Friday morning I just grabbed the 11 foot float rod without thinking. As I say, this would not be my first visit to Ardrea so I should have remembered it is a deep lough, requiring a 13 footer to give me sufficient reach. But no, here I was plumbing up to find deep water even close in to me and having to fish with a waggler set at over 13 feet on an eleven foot rod. In addition, the reel I had brought along was the same one I’d used on the previous couple of sessions and it had not been cleaned in a while. It was filthy and the line stuck and snagged on dried in fish slime and other nasties on the spool rim and bail. I dipped it in the lough then tried rubbing off the worst of the crud with a cloth but it needed a proper clean and lube to smooth things out. While I had a great session I could have made it much more comfortable simply by doing the basics back at home.

Weather wise it was going to be a mixed bag with bright sunshine one minute then lashing rain the next. I am not going to complain, most of Europe is still being scorched by the seemingly never ending heatwave, so temperatures in the high teens and the odd heavy shower would be mana from heaven for millions of people. Sometimes the wind fell away to nothing in the sun, but then blew strongly in the squalls. That rain left the madly lopsided stand treacherously slippery, just to add to my casting difficulties with the short rod and dirty reel.

Even as I was setting up I could hear a tractor revving in the next field. It turned out the open gate was to allow the farmer in so he could do some work on the land. Yep, you have guessed it, he was muck spreading! For the uninitiated, here in Ireland we have huge herds of cattle. These animals are generally kept indoors over the winter months in special buildings with tanks underneath them where the ‘waste’ is gathered. This sludge is then transferred into a tanker trailer and spread over the fields during the summer as a form of fertiliser. As you can imagine, this is a pretty malodourous job, and here I was sitting on the edge of a field where the poop was about to be sprayed. Sure enough, the muck spraying went on for most of the time I was fishing, detracting from the peace and quiet as well as assaulting my nostrils.

So what about the fishing then? I missed a couple of bites before catching a hybrid, so I made an alteration to the shotting pattern to try and straighten the drop and have better contact with the hook. Next up a shoal of small roach came into the swim and I had half-a-dozen of them in jig time. The inevitable small perch showed up, then a hybrid, then a skimmer. And so it went on, never hectic but steady enough. Roach predominated but they were mostly small lads with one one that would have nudged a pound if I had weighed it. Hybrids were much less numerous which was a shame as they were a better stamp of fish. A couple of hours in a nice tench of about four pounds head-and-tailed not three yards in front of me, causing much chucking of groundbait and maggots then intense concentration for a while but I could not tempt him. At least I know now that there are tench in Ardrea.

When I was plumbing up I found the depth was very uneven in front of me. Once I was fishing this became a bit on an issue as some casts saw the float cock perfectly, but others, in very close proximity, left he float too high. I suspect this was due to what I call ‘cabbage’ on the bottom. These aquatic plants are big and tough and when a baited hook lands on top of one the float will not cock properly. If I go back to Ardrea I will bring a rake to try and clear a swim. The thing is, in my experience cabbages are nearly to impossible to pull out.

One unfortunate hybrid was attacked by a pike just as I was about to net it, causing a few lost scales but nothing worse (that’s him in the photo above). Later, a small roach was less fortunate and it was snaffled by a jack who neatly snatched the silver off the hook. The combination of depth, short rod and shy bites meant I missed a lot of fish or dropped them on the way in. All part of the game and in truth most of these were small fish so it was no great loss. I did try corn for a while just to see if it would work but I only had one fish on it so I switched back to double maggot and the bites came quickly once again.

By 2.30pm the fishing was slacking off and it was time to vacant the stinky, slippery platform. Packed up, I now had to walk across the freshly manured field which was a less than pleasant exercise. Once back at the car I did my best to clean my boots in the long grass, but the small of cow shit still filled the car and I drove home to Mayo with the windows wound down. The final tally for the 5 hour session was 9 hybrids, with the best one topping a pound in weight, 27 small roach with only one of them scraping the pound, 3 tiny perch and three respectable skimmers.

I’ve whinged on about all the things that went wrong on the day but I am planning on going back to fish lough Ardrea again. I like the size and ‘feel’ of the place, it is not intimidating and is obviously full of fish. Now I know there are tench in in lough I will aim to fish in one evening and hopefully find some tench on the feed. As I said before, raking out a swim might be the key to success when it comes to not just tench but also better sized roach and bream.

Nature note – I snagged on something on the bottom half way through the session and dragged in a clump of freshwater mussels. These were carefully returned to the water as they are critically endangered. I was surprised to see them here in a small, poorly oxygenated lough in rich farmland as they require good water quality to survive. What was particularly heartening was the size of the mussels, they were juveniles, little guys who will hopefully breed in the future and keep the species viable in this wee lake. Apologies for the poor photo, I took it in the middle of a heavy shower, hence the blurred image.

PS. It is Saturday afternoon and I am happy to report my rods and, more importantly, reels have been thoroughly cleaned. I also stripped the reels and lubricated them. Normally I keep on top of wee jobs like this but lately standards have obviously slipped. Note to self – must do better!