Ballyleague

Last week went by with too much to be done at home and no time left for fishing. We all get times like that and I am unbelievably lucky that just a week without being bankside feels like a long time. This week I have plans to get out more with the rods, and what better place to start than the Shannon at Lanesborough? Well, not exactly Lanesborough itself, instead I was going fishing directly across the river in Ballyleague, in the county Roscommon.

Finding the roach, hybrids or bream on such a massive system as the Shannon is a daunting task. They can be thick one week and nowhere to be seen the next. One session your feeder tip can be pulled over most casts by big lumps of roach, or you can only catch tiddlers of a few ounces the very next day. Trying to forecast the location of the shoals with any degree of accuracy will prove dangerous to your mental health, so I am happy to simply select spots where there is a chance of fish and accept that blanks and poor days are just part and parcel of fishing natural venues. The Shannon, in common with every other river in Ireland, is currently at an extremely low level after the torturously dry summer we have endured. There was every chance that the fish could have retreated downstream a few yards through the cut and into the depths of lough Ree, abandoning the warm water in the river itself for cooler climes. Then again, that inherent need to move into flowing water at this time of the year might override the urge to stay cool. I was about to find out. The worst that could happen was I’d spend a few hours at the fag end of August sitting on the edge of a river watching life go by.

Gear-wise, the 13 foot Diaw Ninja match rod was perfect for fishing the float, while the 12 foot Leeda feeder rod would suffice for the relatively light weights for the days feeder fishing. Normally, the strong flows and deep water which characterise the Shannon require stout feeder tactics, but the low water was going to make bottom fishing a tad easier on me. Realistically, it was roach and hybrids I was targeting on the day, with the outside possibility of bream or tench. April/May are much more likely times to meet bream, but this is fishing, so anything is possible.

My selected swim was between the quay and the tiny public marina, tucked away in some rushes and right across from the old Bord na Mona power station. That now largely disused site was for a long time the most popular fishing venue in the whole of Ireland. ‘The flusher’, dumped warm water which had been cooling liquid in the steam generation process, back into the river. This created a micro climate which attracted thousands of coarse fish into the river immediately downstream. Anglers, many of them from England, flocked to Lanesborough where impossibly large bags of bream, hybrids, tench and roach made the place famous. Then, in 2020, it all came to an abrupt end when the power station was shutdown. The fish disappeared, never to return in the vast numbers of before, and with their departure the visiting anglers found other venues and the wonderful fishing in Lanesborough faded into memories. Now here I was, looking over the silvery stream at the disused plant and hoping to tempt the descendants of the roach of yesteryear.

I’m not going to bore you with my normal routine of packing and driving, so let’s pick up from when I arrived at the tackle shop in Longford to buy maggots. Nope, they were clean out of maggots, presenting me with a couple of not too palatable options – I could drive all the way to Athlone and chance getting bait there, but Wildhunter have often let me down on Mondays before as they get their delivery from the supplier on Thursdays and are bereft of maggots come the beginning of the week. My alternative was to use the very few live maggots left in the tub of casters I had with me and supplement that with a few worms which were also in my possession. The idea of trailing all the way to Athlone on the slim chance they had bait did not appeal in the slightest, so this somewhat deflated angler headed down the road the Ballyleague, seriously handicapped but determined to press on regardless.

Parked up, I lugged the gear to the swim and started fishing. My second excuse (you can see already how the day went) is the river was dead low. I have never seen the Shannon this empty of water with barely any flow at all in it. Plumbing up I found a shelf about eight yards out, where the less than two feet of water close in very abruptly dropped off to about nine feet. The further out I went the water actually got shallower, so there was a definite sweet spot at eight to ten yards. I looked out my ground bait and only then discovered I had forgotten to bring the mixing bowl. Emptying my water bucket, I used it to mix up the ground bait and fired in three balls to get things started. The very first cast with the waggler yielded a small roach, but any thoughts this was the start of a bonanza quickly evaporated. I picked up a small perch on the bottom rod after twenty minutes and soon after that a very skinny hybrid to the last of my maggots.

I had left my bank sticks in the car and had been fishing with the feeder rod propped up on my tackle bag, but this wasn’t working out too well. Returning to the car park, I grabbed the sticks and came back across the grass. Just as I was negotiating the small drop down to the shingle where I was fishing my vertigo kicked in. The world spun at high speed, flashing lights replaced normal vision and I went down in an inelegant heap. By luck I didn’t hurt myself beyond a bruised shoulder, nor did I fall on my rods and I even refrained from getting wet in the river as I landed in the reeds. A few minutes elapsed before the attack subsided and I could gingerly edge back on to the chair and pull myself together. I drank some water and waited – in a bad attacked the vomiting would begin as soon as I swallowed anything, but this time the water stayed down and I all I needed to do was sit quietly for a while and let the spinning pass. A bit shaky for the next while, I was back to my usual self within an hour.

I have never been a fan of casters. I know you are going to tell me they can be excellent and even that they a great for bigger fish. I have read or been told all of that multiple times, but the sad fact remains I can’t catch a bloody thing on casters. With that in mind, I turned to the humble worm when the maggots ran out. Switching to a size 12 hook, I fished on with either one small worm or a half of a larger wriggler, using a dead maggot to stop the worm wriggling off the barbless hook. To a degree, this worked. Concentrating hard on pin point casting, I began to get savage bites on the float rod. If I missed, the hook came back bare or the worm was mutilated. Of course, I had attracted a shoal of perch into the swim, scrappy little lads of no more than half a pound. Ok, so this not the big fat roach I had hoped for, but beggars can’t be choosers and at least I was catching something. These perch were in fantastic condition, fought really hard and were stunning to look at. It got me thinking about perch fishing in general. Not a species I target, maybe it is time for me to pay more attention to these common fish? Time passed, the float dipped and I connected – or didn’t as the case may be. The odd cruiser slipped by but it was surprisingly peaceful for the last day of August on the big river. By half-past-two I had had enough and called it a day. 14 perch, a couple of small roach and that underfed hybrid was the miserable total, but in hindsight you can only catch what is there.

As you have read, Monday was far from my most successful session, but there was one highlight which made the day unforgettable. I had resumed fishing after the vertigo episode and was holding the float rod in my right hand as usual, my gaze fixed on the bright red float tip, nine yards out in the river. In my periphery vision I saw a small bird flying low over the river and heading directly towards me. Turning my head in that direction I could only see a silhouette, as like every good spitfire pilot, he came out of the sun. At the last second I saw what it was and the kingfisher braked hard then landed on my rod between the second and third rings, not two feet from me. He cocked his head and regarded me intently, claws clamped around the carbon rod. My phone was just of of reach and I would have dearly loved to have taken a picture, but the slightest movement from me would surely have scared the bird off. Instead, we both stared at each other, creatures of the same planet but inhabiting totally different worlds. Then, in a whirl of azure and orange he was gone, zooming off down the river. I found I had been holding my breath for the twenty or so seconds the brief encounter had lasted. Over the years I have had wrens and chaffinches come and sit on a rod, but this was the first time a kingfisher had come so close. No matter what disasters had befallen me, those fleeting seconds in the proximity of that tiny bird made the whole day worthwhile.

It is Tuesday morning now and I have to empty the gear from the car, clean it and prepare for my next foray. I had hoped to return to the Shannon, this time further down river, but after yesterday I will reconsider that plan. The arrival of September with its shortening days makes me feel I want to make the most of the few remaining days before bad weather forces me off the water for days on end. First I need to buy some maggots!