May came and went with unreasonable haste. I hardly wet a line during the merry month, a combination of work commitments and Mediterranean weather kept me occupied and the fish unmolested. Reports suggest the mayfly was late but is still hatching in good numbers as I write in the first week of June and as […]
Read More An easy mayfly patternI like old patterns. Something nostalgic is awakened when you tie on one of the classic flies from the last century or the century before. That link with the past offers reassurance and knowledge if a fly has been around for this long it must catch fish. So my fly boxes bulge with old-stagers […]
Read More The Soldier PalmerFriday night’s revelries led to a very tired Colin this morning which was not good as Ben and I had an arrangement to launch another boat on Lough Conn. Scrambling out of bed and into some fishing clothes, I noted the blue sky and stiff breeze moving the trees in the garden, scattering the last […]
Read More Dragons and pole dancersIt looked for all the world like one of those days in mid-winter when the sky fills with menacing clouds and snow falls thickly, snarling up traffic and turning the pavements into streams. That was Saturday and the cold snap continued into Sunday. Between the snow showers three of us flipped my boat over and […]
Read More Cold day on CullinTackling small streams can prove a challenge for anglers who are more used to wide open spaces and plenty of elbow room for casting. Here in the west of Ireland we have a number of small streams, most of which are never fished, yet contain a reasonable head of wild Brown Trout. Rivers like the […]
Read More Small river fly fishingDon’t you just love technology? OK, so it kind of takes over our lives sometimes and swallows up too much of our free time (if we let it), but on the whole technology enriches our everyday lives. Here in the West of Ireland I use Google Earth to look for likely places to fish. Much […]
Read More Planning for the new seasonFollowing on from a previous post I will discuss a few more patterns which have worked on Lough Conn for me over the years. Malloch’s Favourite Firstly we will take a look at a Scottish fly which has worked for me during the olive hatch. Each spring the Western lakes get good hatches of lake […]
Read More Flies for Lough Conn, part 2It is raining today. It rained yesterday and the day before that. The countryside around here in Co. Mayo is totally waterlogged and serious flooding is occurring as I write this post. People’s livelihoods and homes are threatened by this prolonged period of wet weather and they are understandably angry with a government who they […]
Read More Dredging is not the answerThe weather Gods have pissed on us for more than a week now and the county of Mayo is sodden. Rivulets of water are still running across roads and the fields are flooded. Most of the rivers around here have burst their banks and spilled their contents across the landscape. And amidst this deluge we hoped […]
Read More After the rainIt’s mid-November and the year is showing its age. Leaves clog the drains around the house now and the heating boiler had to be coaxed into life again with some deft hammer blows to the pump housing and a liberal stream of expletives. We were blessed with an unusually calm period of high pressure during […]
Read More Pass my hammer, it is getting cold
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