I am risking life and limb here as I commit fly tying heresy. The ‘bumble’ patterns devised by the late, great Justice T.C. Kingsmill Moore were ahead of their time in many ways. His use of multiple different coloured hackles to impart ‘life’ into his flies were an inspiration and his prodigious catches of troutContinueContinue reading “Silver Blue Bumble”
Category Archives: Fishing in Ireland
A tough day
There has not been much fishing for me of late. Either I have been busy with tasks around the house or the weather has been awful, either way my gear has been gathering dust in the spare room for most of the month of November. Met Eireann, our state weather forecaster, promised us a halfContinueContinue reading “A tough day”
Clyde style
A day of lashing rain outside, a bitingly cold wind hammering the water against the windows and finding every small crack or opening to chill the air inside the house. I lit the fire early, the kindling crackling and spluttering until the flue warmed and the heat began to flow in the kitchen. Too wetContinueContinue reading “Clyde style”
Half way
In an earlier post I said that I was aiming to make 1,000 flies over the winter period. I envisaged it would take me until the end of February 2026 to complete that number, but it looks like I might be a bit wide of the mark. This week the 500th fly rolled off myContinueContinue reading “Half way”
No particular place to go
It seemed a shame to waste the current unusually mild spell of weather so I decided to go coarse fishing on Thursday. My only problem was figuring out where exactly to fish. The Royal canal had died away weeks ago, so that was out of the question. The rivers are all still swollen and evenContinueContinue reading “No particular place to go”
The importance of fly choice?
I have been busy tying flies over the past few weeks, dabblers and bumbles pouring off the vice as boxes are filled and the overflow chucked into a receptacle a a sort of back up for next season. Of course, I don’t really need any more flies, thousands are already in my collections of troutContinueContinue reading “The importance of fly choice?”
A bit of everything
It has been a while since I posted anything here, so this is a bit of a catch up. That storm a couple of weeks ago did some minor damage to the house, meaning I was up ladders again making repairs instead of fishing. ‘Amy’ gave the west of Ireland a good battering, bringing downContinueContinue reading “A bit of everything”
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.ContinueContinue reading “Storm Amy”
A very short session
I managed to squeeze in an hour with the rods yesterday. I was passing over the Shannon as I was heading back to Mayo from the east coast. In anticipation of just such an opportunity, I had stowed some gear in the back of the car and was able to try out a new venueContinueContinue reading “A very short session”
Back at the vice
After a l-o-n-g hiatus, I have returned to the vice and started to do a bit of fly tying. 2025 will go down for me as the year when I hardly fished, did almost no ghillieing and tied virtually no flies. The good news is that most of the big non-fishing jobs required of meContinueContinue reading “Back at the vice”
Claretbumbler 