Ronan's Report

I think it’s exciting to choose the destination first and then see if I can figure out what I can catch there afterwards. I’ve done this a few times over the years, mainly to accommodate the non-anglers I was traveling with! It’s been a bit hit and miss as one would expect. Mostly miss to be honest. Vietnam was a fail, I never even had a cast in India, Thailand was a fail (apart from a 70lb catfish on spin gear!), Jordan was almost a success, Chicago was okay, Portugal and the Azores were fantastic. The latest, Sardinia, I wish I could say it was great but I can’t.

I did quite a bit of research after Iza and a I chose Sardinia for a family holiday (with 2 fishing days for me). It was hard to find any solid info. Slowly I made contact with some guides and they were helpful. I was hoping to try for black bass on the inland dams but in high summer they go deep and fishing for them would likely be no good. I was directed to Gigi and we locked in a couple of days after seabass. I believe it’s the same species of bass as what we have in Ireland. Once it was booked I left it at that. I didn’t look into it any more apart from getting a bit of advise on flies.

Sardinia is beautiful with stunning coastline. As we drove around parts of the island I could see loads of potential for a shore based angler. Rocky shores, defined drop-offs, sandy areas, lagoons and river mouths – a great mix of featureful coastline with beautiful clear water. One of the highlights was snorkelling around the rocks near the beaches we chose to swim at. With Adaline on my back we explored. She just had goggles on so she’d grab a breath and then look in over my shoulder, pointing at every fish she’d see. It was such a great experience for both of us. There were plenty fish up to about 3lbs in weight. I don’t know the species but there was a variety. I had a feeling that a worm fly fished about 6 to 8 foot under an indicator could do well for these fish but I didn’t have a chance to try.

My designated fishing days arrived! I was up at 4.30am to meet Gigi in Olbia for 6am. I really didn’t know what to expect. The carpark was right at the water – a system of lagoons inside Olbia seaport. The lagoons were walled but with gaps to allow for the tidal movement. It looked fishy. Gigi helped me pick a fly and then we started fishing. Walking while casting around structure. I felt very familiar with this type of fishing. Gigi knew every drop-off, gutter, and weed bed. With his help I kept the fly where it needed to be. Then I hooked one! A small bass but a positive start. From then we continued around the lagoons for the rest of the day. There was one spot where we saw a few. I had one follow there but in general I wasn’t feeling it. I know how fishing can be though, so feeling it or not I wasn’t going to lose heart. Gigi said it was too warm and generally there wasn’t enough wind. No joy on day 1 apart from the little bass at the start. To finish the session we went for beer and a chat.

Day 2. We went to a new lagoon a short drive away. With a new location comes renewed optimism. The mullet (bass food) were rising so that was good to see. We walked the lagoon seeing nothing but covering all likely water – Gigi with spin gear and me with fly. We got to a river mouth which looked very good. I sighted one and he followed a couple of times but no eat. Gigi also saw one which he didn’t get. We decided to go back to the Olbia lagoons to fish the spot that had a few fish. No joy. It was interesting to see some other people foraging in the lagoon for various shellfish including oysters and clams to sell to local restaurants. We didn’t see any other anglers.

With the fishing just not on at all, I thought we’d go to some coastline away from the port for some other species but this is Gigi’s fishery and this is where he guides. We did see a brief bust up on the surface with a large bluefish attacking some mullet on the ocean side of the lagoons. I made a half decent shot but no eat, sadly. It was all so brief. These fish looked amazing and they’d be a great target species..

It was pretty clear that I was there at the wrong time of year for bass. Probably the worst month of the year! It was a shame because the lagoons are so interesting. Very varied water. Gigi said October is best. I would recommend getting in touch with him and organising some fishing when it’s good. A few days with Gigi fishing for seabass in Sardinia? why not..

For bookings this NZ guiding season you can contact me ronan@sexyloops.com or visit my website. You can check out my range of flies with Fulling Mill here.

Tight Lines, Ronan..

I love the familiarity of arriving into Dublin airport. Arriving home. It had been 4 years and I was looking forward to that familiarity more than I realised. It felt great to be back. The family and I were all out of the airport quickly and onto a bus west. The public bus service in Ireland is fantastic. The bus was comfortable and I enjoyed the 2.5 hour trip across the country to Galway, while catching up on a little sleep. My brother and my mother picked us up from Galway. Iza and the kids travelled with my mother and I travelled with Conor. This gave me a great opportunity to pick up a few beers to make the final leg of the journey to Roundstone even better. Relaxing in the passenger seat chatting to Conor, drinking a couple of nice IPAs, enjoying the lakes and mountains as we continued west and then the familiar sight of Roundstone. As tempting as stopping for a pint in Kings was, we went straight home. It was so good to see everyone. Siblings, parents nieces and nephew. Home for the next 5 weeks. The objective now is to spend time with family, catch up with friends, drink a shcather of pints, and go fishing. I’ll talk about the fishing…

I expected the majority of my fishing would be on the Kylemore and Inagh fisheries so the first thing I did was buy a full season salmon license for e100. I was told that it’s mostly catch and release now. I’m all for C&R of course, but I couldn’t help seeing the hypocrisy of imposing this regulation on the angler while salmon farms continue to operate in the bays spreading disease, sea lice and pollution amongst wild populations. Anglers never impacted stocks to any serious degree, but here we are picking up the tab in a vain attempt at conservation. The ambulance parked at the bottom of the cliff.

I was there when the rain came after a long dry spell. The hottest and driest on record I think. The timing was perfect with the rain coming at the end of June when the first grilse run usually arrives. This should get the fish moving up river. Dad and I spent a few days out on the water after the first rain, but we were a bit early it seemed. We didn’t see many. I was lucky to get a beautiful fresh grilse of about 6lbs on our second day out. We left it a while before going out again, waiting on word of grilse being caught.

The seatrout numbers on Inagh were encouraging. Dad was getting decent numbers for his clients. He had a great day with our mutual friend, Marcus when they got 8 to about 2lbs – a very decent west of Ireland seatrout. Dad had another day out on Inagh on his own where he landed a dozen seatrout and a 6lb grilse. Fishing like the old days. I was told that the some of the local salmon farms were not operating this season which would certainly explain the decent numbers of seatrout. It just goes to show how quickly seatrout could reestablish themselves if they were allowed to. Is there any chance the Irish government could just outlaw open pen salmon farming? Imagine what we’d gain? But alas, we sacrifice our wild fish and fishing to make the Mowi wankers in Norway even richer. Sickening. Anyway, We also fished Kylemore a couple of times. Fish were lower down in the system but we didn’t see any on the lake. Kylemore is a tough lake in general, painfully so at times but it can really turn on now and again. Every day I fish it, it’s in the hope of that magic window which so rarely comes. There’s also a chance of a big brown here which may offer a better chance of good fishing than grilse do – there’s not much know about targeting these big browns though so the only way to go after them would be through trial and error, and probably with a depth sounder.

Towards the end of the trip I had a couple of days on Corrib. One day with John and One with dad. On each day the fishing was good in the morning. We fished small dry sedges (size 14) and these gave us the best results. After the first few drifts each day the fishing went dead – and stayed dead for the rest of the day. I think the poor fishing in the afternoons was easy to explain. The water was warm. It felt like 20c when I put my hand in. I guess in the mornings the fish had some chance to feed in the relatively cooler water. June was incredibly hot and even though the weather was pretty cool in July, the lake temperature hadn’t dropped substantially.

So to sum up, the fishing was hard. Ireland is rarely easy and this was no exception. I’m happy with my lot though. I was thrilled to catch that stunning grilse on the Inagh river beats – certainly the highlight. I wish I was out with dad on his bumper day but I was away with the family in Sardinia. It was good to see some seatrout about. Many were very small but there were a few decent stumps about too. This might just have been a case of meeting the main run as it arrived, but let’s hope this will continue to be a good season for them and not just a flash in the pan. Corrib was good in the mornings of the 2 days I fished it so I was happy with that. I hoped to get out with Tom Doc too but for one reason or another we didn’t manage a day together. Next time hopefully! I tried for a pollack (or a bass) off the rocks with my friend Nigel too, but didn’t get a touch. Unfortunately I never made it out on sea in a boat. The weather was pretty wild out there for much of the time I was home. I don’t have a hell of a lot to report from Sardinia but I’ll compile that next.. Currently, back in New Zealand, I’ve been putting all my time into restoring my boat. Just that, no fishing! It’s complete now so I’ll report on that soon too, she’s looking great…

There’s still some space available for this coming season. Get in touch if you’d like to book something in or to ask any questions. Email ronan@sexyloops.com or visit my website. You can check out my range of Fulling Mill fly patterns by clicking this link.

Tight Lines, Ronan..

I’m just back from a great trip to Ireland and the US with the family. We also visited Sardinia. I squeezed in a couple of days fishing while we were there, but more on all that later. I had most of the work on this blog done before we left about 7 weeks ago but never found the time to finish it. That’s proof of a great holiday. I’ve certainly been chasing my tail a bit in the last year trying to keep the blog as current as I can – I think it’s always like that though. This takes a lot of time and effort and it really get away from me at times. The photos below are from April, May and into June and this brings me up to date with my NZ fishing photos which almost never happens! Next up will be Ireland and Sardinia – possibly in the same blog or maybe broken in 2.

Late in the season I finally got over to Dunedin to fish with Robbie on some of his local water. A very interesting estuary it is. It was very windy when we were there which limited how much of the lagoon we could fish. It’s certainly not for everyone with electric fences right to the water making fishing risky and tricky. Much of it gets very weeded up and it’s certainly “cow shit country” with this area very intensively farmed. Lots of muddy, shitty drains leading straight into the lagoon. It’s amazing to me the level of pollution that goes unchecked in so much of this country. “Clean and green” it’s not but in the face of all this, there is still great fishing to be had both in general and at this lagoon. Some fisheries have died though and the future of fishing here is not certain – but enough about the negative, I just felt the need to mention that! The fishing was hard that day. Between the 2 of us we moved about 5 trout landing just 1. A lovely trout about 4.5lbs on a red and grey fry imitation of mine. We could see in pretty well at times but we sighted very few trout – those we did see had no interest in a bugger. A little nymph would have been better. The best action we had came from blind fishing. We also took a wander down to the rivermouth but didn’t see anything fishy. It was great to see the place and I’m looking forward to going back.

Since I’ve been home there’s been a mixed bag of weather from snowstorms to lovely warm days. We’re slowly getting over the jet lag. It’s harder with kids because we’re awake when they are. I should get a few opportunities to go fishing pretty soon which I’m looking forward to. This time of year can be fantastic! Be sure to get in touch if you’d like to lock in some late winter fishing – many fish have long finished spawning by now and are piling on condition.

If you’d like to check out my flies available on Fulling Mill you can see them here. They accounted for some lovely browns on Lough Corrib in Ireland recently and most of the fish in the pictures below. Here’s a little clip from August a couple of years ago with my Bruiser streamer doing the business..

I’d like to mention that I recently bought some Primal Bold rods for my clients who come without gear. I don’t get too excited about expensive fly rods in general and these rods are testament to why that is. For the money these are excellent. Great rods regardless of price. The 5 is a gem. It does exactly what a 5wt should do. The 6 is also a very capable rod. I have no issues with it at all. The 7 is a powerful weapon – great for launching heavy streamers, windy days, big rivers etc. I highly recommend these as a back-up or as your primary rod. When they’re previously rigged for clients I don’t bother rigging my own rods because these rods are sound.

Next season is filling up fast! January and February are full but there’s still limited spaces in the other months. Contact me on ronan@sexyloops.com or visit my website.

Tight Lines! Ronan..