Big fish from Mask

Just a very quick few lines to tell you about a couple of very big fish caught just before the end of the season on Lough Mask. My good friend Toby Gibbons from Westport was out in the deeps the other day when a huge wild brownie grabbed his Octopus. I have yet to catch […]

Mouth of the canal

This trip had been planned for a while but had to be put off for various reasons. Mike works at the plant in Westport where I had been on contract and we talked often about our fishing exploits, eventually agreeing we would fish Lough mask one day. After numerous false starts we finally made it […]

Burnt Orange Mayfly

or the Ear Plug Mayfly The best thing about this assignment I am on just now is that I finish work for the week at 1pm on a Friday. It’s lovely to feel the morning flying by and suddenly it is time to leave and head off for what feels like a long weekend. Yesterday […]

IFI

An interesting piece in the local rag (the Mayo Advertiser) by Cllr Michael Burke who sits on Mayo County Council. In a half page piece he discusses the huge changes in the structure of the old IFT which has over the years become Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI). He rightly points out that angling tourism which […]

Forward thinking

With the season officially started I need to wrap my head around where I’m going to fish during 2019. Last season was a disaster for me so I need to think carefully about these plans to avoid yet more disappointment. Some venues are just too special to ignore, so the likes of Lough Beltra and […]

Bloody Dabbler

On holiday now so I am busy tying flies for the upcoming season. I have lots of ideas floating around in my head and one of them took shape this morning in the form of a Bloody Dabbler. This is loosely based on the Bloody Butcher, a great old pattern which used to work for […]

Sooty Olive

Picture the scene if you will; it’s early season on the Western lakes and the urge to fish has brought you to the shores of Lough Mask. Still too early for the gorse to bloom, everywhere in sight is coloured in sombre duns and greys. That joyous rush of prescient life, that hope and expectation […]

Wish list

It’s all over for 2017 and I am stuck in another hotel room a long way from home, thinking about next season already. It is a nice hotel, comfortable and warm with an excellent menu in the restaurant downstairs. However, it is not home and so it pales when measured against my abode in the […]

Gone for good

÷ It is never a good sound. Sometimes it is a loud, alarming crack, sometimes it’s a grating, snapping sound and then again it can be a deadly, barely audible ‘phut’. However it manifests itself the noise of your rod breaking is disturbing and emotional. We anglers grow so attached to those lengths of carbon […]

Angling update

A wee update for you on the fishing in these parts. Beltra -the odd spring salmon being caught but to be honest the lough needs a good shot of water in it now to encourage a run of salmon. River Moy – a trickle of fish seem to be entering the system now and catches, […]