Category Archives: coarse fishing

I have written elsewhere about the fish kill on Clare Lake in Claremorris and the devastating effect it had on the fishing. It was already a fishery under pressure due to poaching, but the effluent spill finished it off and the five angling stands have been deserted ever since the foul waste water entered theContinueContinue reading “Clare Lake”

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 beContinueContinue reading “Mucking about in Sligo”

Not the famous salmon fishery in the west of Ireland, this is instead a coarse lake near to Strokestown in the county Roscommon. I had planned to fish on Monday but the Mayo victory against Kerry the previous day scuppered that as celebratory drinks got completely out of hand. An alcohol fuelled late night renderedContinueContinue reading “A morning on Finlough”

So I used to fish this small lake in county Leitrim for tench. Note the use of the past tense, as this venue had but one stand to fish from, the entirety of the circumference being covered by a 50 yard deep belt of rushes. That rickety wooden stand collapsed into the water a coupleContinueContinue reading “Happy in defeat”

Part 1 I fished Mayfield lough in Claremorris earlier this year and caught a nice bag of skimmers and hybrids. With half a tub of maggots to be used up I decided to give the lough another try last Sunday morning. I had to pick up herself in Tuam around lunchtime, so Claremorris was onContinueContinue reading “Mayfield, parts 1 and 2”

Despite the outrageous title, this post is just more musings of a fisherman trying to catch tiddlers on an Irish river. Family stuff meant I was dropping my other half at her sister’s in Tuam on Saturday morning, so being that far down the country anyway I figured it would be rude not to doContinueContinue reading “Sucking and blowing”

Mississippi Fred McDowell wrote the blues standard ‘You got to move’ in the mid-sixties and it was famously covered by the Rolling Stones on their Sticky Fingers album. It was one of the first blues songs I learned to butcher on the guitar and it remains a favourite of mine. Todays tale from the watersideContinueContinue reading “You got to move”

My first tench trip of the year had ended in disaster with the loss of one very large fish. After much licking of wounds it was time for me to get out there and try for a tench or two again. To give myself a fighting chance I drove down to the royal canal andContinueContinue reading “Weeds”

Lord only knows how often I have driven past Lough McNean. A lifetime of journeys to the north or onwards to a ferry bound for Scotland entailed crossing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic at the bridge over the river which joins upper and lower Lough McNean. The road passes along the northContinueContinue reading “Missing bites on the border”

While I had a reasonably good session fishing for roach in one of the rivers which flow into one of the big loughs in my area, I had heard big bream swam into the same pools once we were into the month of May. Well, here we are in the merry month so it wasContinueContinue reading “Not yet!”