One of the great benefits of living and fishing in these parts is the lack of pressure to catch something. There is a strong and highly organised competitive angling scene in Ireland but I am not competitive in life and certainly not when it comes to angling. For me the simple joys of a few […]
Read More Half StonedI am hopeful that tomorrow I will escape the drudgery of paid employment for a few hours to enjoy a few casts and mark the start of my 2016 season. Before then I need to sort out my tackle and make some final repairs. I am planning a short trip to the River Robe […]
Read More New beginningsDon’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 seasonMy computer is full of photos taken when fishing, most of which will never see the light of day, so here are a few random pics for you to enjoy. This one has obviously been idle for some time! The weather is settled and dry so salmon fishing is dead slow here. Trout angling is […]
Read More Random photosI 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 history […]
Read More The Iron Blue DunRobeen 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 some […]
Read More A difficult dayA 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 form […]
Read More Messing around with the Hare’s EarThe morning drifted past today with no chance of sneaking off to the river, but after lunch I grabbed the chance to fish for an hour on the River Robe. The weather was horribly bright but the river was running at a good level and colour after recent showers. It was after 3pm before I […]
Read More First castsEarly season mean low water temperatures and not much surface activity so my normal approach to trouting on rivers at this time of year is either upstream nymphing or wet fly fished up/down/across/anyway I can get it in the water. Let’s start with the nymph. I fish almost exclusively with bead-headed nymphs these days. There […]
Read More What to use in March?This post has been transferred to my FB page.
Read More Getting ready for the first outing
Claretbumbler 