What you need in your box

The trout fishing on the rivers has taken off now and those of you who are lucky enough to be able to fish for wild Brownies in the West of Ireland should be on the river at every opportunity. A lot depends on the weather of course, but the next 6 weeks will provide usContinue reading "What you need in your box"

Google maps and dead presidents

After another fruitless day trolling for salmon yesterday I was ready for some fly fishing today. I felt like a change of venue so I turned to technology and consulted Google maps. At the highest resolution you can discern water features such as bends, weirs and rapids and I use this to guide me toContinue reading "Google maps and dead presidents"

The Iron Blue Dun

I want to discuss the Iron Blue Dun (it is too much hassle to write Iron Blue Dun all the time so I will refer to it as 'IBD' in this post). For such a tiny insect it has generated a huge amount of words in  angling literature, and rightly so. From the earliest historyContinue reading "The Iron Blue Dun"

The Gold Head Daddy

Most of the flies I describe on the blog are generally designed or used for Brownies, sea trout or salmon. We don't have any rainbows around here so my boxes of lures and other rainbow trout flies lie gathering an accumulation of dust. Every now and then I take an urge to make up someContinue reading "The Gold Head Daddy"

Trolling, the gentle art of doing not much at all

Trolling, the not so fine art of dragging spinning and wobbling lures behind a moving boat is not everyone's cup of tea. If my fishing was confined solely to days spent trolling I would long ago have sold the rods and taken up computer gaming or amature dramatics instead. As it is though, I indulge inContinue reading "Trolling, the gentle art of doing not much at all"

Scratching a dry itch

The fickle March weather has turned cold and wet again. The balmy few days we had last week have been swept away by mean winds that seek out every opening to send a chill through me as if to remind me of my advancing years. Looking back over the season so far the rod hasContinue reading "Scratching a dry itch"

A couple of old spiders for this time of year

OK so there is nothing even remotely new about these two patterns but they are so effective that I think there is no harm in reminding you about them both. Let's start with the Poult Bloa. Yellow tying silk with the faintest mist of water rat or mole's fur dubbed on it form the bodyContinue reading "A couple of old spiders for this time of year"

A difficult day

Robeen Bridge as a handy entry point on the River Robe. Both banks are clear downstream of the bridge but there is a heavily wooded stretch immediately upstream and this means that you have to get into the water and wade upriver to fish this part. The bottom is very slippery and there are someContinue reading "A difficult day"

Messing around with the Hare’s Ear

A standard Gold Head GRHE nymph The GRHE gold head nymph is one of my standard patterns but I thought I would tie up a variation, so here it is: This is dressed on a curved grub hook and I added some chopped up fl. lime floss and red fur to the HE to formContinue reading "Messing around with the Hare’s Ear"

As good as it gets

The bridge, good water below here 19th March. The bright and warm weather is unusual for this time of year and I decide to go fishing, hoping the good weather will have raised water temperatures and brought the trout on the feed. So with Bob Seger blasting out on the CD in the car IContinue reading "As good as it gets"