Gales force winds over the past couple of days kept me indoors, but Thursday looked like it would be a bit quieter so I ventured out with the rods. Once again I was heading for the Camlin River, but this time I wanted to try a different stretch, the point where the river, canal and Shannon all come together. When I am scoping out new venues my expectations are low. It takes time to get to know a fishery, understand where and when the fish are there, the exact spots they hold up in at different heights of water and the myriad of other factors which decide if you will be successful. Turning up on the bank with your gear and expecting a big bag of fish is really not very realistic. As for gear this trip I took the Daiwa Ninja 13 foot match rod and the 12 foot medium feeder to cover both float and feeder. Ditching the Korum chair, I brought the old seat box instead as I figured it was easier to lug around. In a new move for me, I also brought along a pike rod, just the 10 foot 10-60 gram Daiwa with a 4000 sized reel filled with 15 pound mono and a wire trace. In the seatbox I stowed a couple of small boxes containing some metal lures and a handful of various sized plugs. I am thinking of taking a pike rod with over the winter, either for a few casts with an artificial, or some days I might chuck out a dead bait. I can’t say I have ever been mad into predator fishing, but what harm to break things up a little? I didn’t use the spinning gear today but I’ll have it all with me from now on over the coming cold months, just in case.
Bait for the day was my usual fare of maggots, worms or corn. Regular readers of this diatribe will recall my dislike of corn as a hook bait, but I am coming around to using it these days. I find bream have a taste for corn and it is useful when the water is full of tiddlers who greedily gobble up any maggots I toss in. The small stuff is less inclined to eat corn, leaving me a better chance of tempting a decent fish. Of course, it is always a useful standby when other baits are in short supply.
Setting off a bit later than planned, the road was quiet and I made good progress despite the horrid roadworks in Strokestown. Over the shining Shannon, then turning right down the narrow road bounded by neat houses and the greenest of fields. There is a locked gate which leads down to a set of locks but for some reason the gate was open. The temptation was to park the car at the locks, but common sense told me this was asking for trouble as whoever had unlocked the gate could lock it again with my car on the wrong side. Instead, I parked up by an old stone building and unloaded my gear under a bright autumn sky on the first day of October. Walking down to the locks, I crossed over and found a faint path which was heading towards the confluence and the exact spot where I wanted to fish from. Nettles and brambles, both well above head height, made progress hard to begin with and after only 50 yards or so down right impossible. Stung and slightly punctured, I about-faced and re-traced my steps to the lock gates and re-crossed to the north bank of the canal. Here there was a lovely clear path leading down to a perfect peg where the river and canal joined, only a hundred yards from the Shannon. Unslinging the heavy seat box I took in the scene.
The Camlin flowed lazily in front of me, reeds crowding thickly around the edges everywhere except for the tiny clearing I was perched on about three feet about the water. The strong wind blowing in my face was going to be an issue but I felt I could cope with it. Quickly tackling up, I tossed the maggot feeder up into the flow of the river, a size 12 hook baited with a lively worm held in place by a single red maggot. Plumbing up revealed a fairly even bed and a depth of about 5 feet, so I set a waggler accordingly and began to fish. Three small balls of groundbait and regular sprinklings of loose maggots gradually built up the swim. For the first 30 or 40 minutes there were no offers and I was just beginning to think I was doing something wrong when the float, which I was letting off down the flow, dipped and I had my first roach of the day. Only a small lad, but I took a photo as I was none to confident I’d catch another one at that stage! The coppery tones on that fish were just stunning.
One more small ball of black 3000 went in, but after that I stuck to sparce loose feeding with maggots. For me, the drop in temperatures over the past two weeks means the fish don’t need too much feed, and indeed, I find you can kill a swim quickly by overfeeding in cold water. After that first one, I was picking up a roach every 5- 10 casts. None of these fish were any great size, all falling to double maggot on a size 16 close to the bottom. The sun shine brightly, the wind grew stronger as the session wore on and the feeder would have caught as many fish if I had left it in the car. A cruiser came up the channel, causing me to reel in and once it had passed I ate my sandwiches as I waited for the water to settle again. By 2pm I was getting restless and thinking of a move. So it was back to the car and a quick drive around the corner to the harbour where I set up just the float rod.
The harbour was crammed with boats tied up 2 or even 3 deep, so finding a gap to poke a fishing rod through was the first challenge. Being slightly shallower than the river, I hitched the float down the line a bit and fished hard for about 30 minutes. All that effort produced one tiny perch and no other bites. Right then, what to do next? Reeling in, I set off for the peg down from the lock gates on the harbour where the Camlin flows deep and quiet through the trees. A few maggots tossed in and then the waggler went out to an almost instantaneous bite. I missed it of course!
This peg is a joy to fish, as long as you are not fishing with a log rod. I had taken the 13 footer with me and this proved to be just too long to handle efficiently amid the branches and twigs over my head. I stuck to my task though, pinging out silly little casts in the general direction I wanted but only hitting the mark occasionally. Finally, another roach pulled the float under and came to hand (just as well as I had not taken a net down here with me). A second fish soon followed, but then it went quiet again. Fishing on for an hour only added two more roach to my total and feeling I had given it my best, I took down the rod and turned for the car park.
For the day, combining all three different pegs, I had landed a grand total of twenty roach, none of them bigger than half-a-pound in weight. Oh, and that miniscule perch from the harbour made it 21 fish for the day. While not great, I am still happy enough as this was going to be a day of searching for a new spot with no idea if there would be anything there to catch. I suspect, the first peg may fish well in May and I am planning on returning there next spring to test that theory out.
As a side note, I finally got around to buying a whip. I wanted a 5 metre one and that was why it took me so long to find one. 3 and 4 metre whips are easy to source, not so with longer ones. Winter roach fishing in marinas is perfectly suited to the whip and bags of small roach are best weighed at the end of a session, so a keep net is also required. I’ll get around to buying one of those soon. I bought the whip from a tackle shop in Longford which one of my readers told me about (many thanks Andrew). ‘Fishing 4 you’ has an impressive range of gear and supplies bait as well. It is on Little Water Street and is open 7 days a week.
