Ronan's Report

The weekend before last John arranged a Corrib PFFA Ireland (Pike Fly Fishers Association) meeting. It was attended by Stuart, Steve, Kristian, John and myself. Day one was in Maam and once again the area did not fire. 4 rods (I only got to bed at 10am on day one so missed the day… Lucky me!) and not a single fish. Day 2 was a different story! We started in Ardnasillagh Bay. Kristian and I had a great start quickly boating 4 pike in the 6-9lb region and we lost a couple. The second half of the day saw us going down the lake to some big fish hot spots. Kristian and myself got distracted by loads of very large trout rising. I simply cannot fish for pike when trout are on the top. Kristian had a superb brown of 4.5lb and another of 1.5lb on my size 14 dry claret sedge which I tie for NZ. I moved a few but boated nothing. John, Steve and Stuart stuck to pike. John had 2 great fish, One 14lbs and another 20lbs 15oz. I have no pics of these fish but hopefully I’ll have them soon. I’ll put them in the next blog. It was great to have Stuart and Steve down to fish our local water. I learned a lot from them about tying pike flies and picked up a few tips on tying pike traces. Thanks fellas! I hope ye learned a bit from us too.

One thing that sometimes pisses me off about Irish fly fishing is how effort and persistence is so hesitant to pay off. When it does pay off it makes it all the sweeter however. After a successful day guiding Norman Kyle (head ghillee on a stretch of the River Tyne in England) I went to fish the river myself. I repeated some water Norman had fished to no avail and then decided to walk across the mountain (bog) to another river beat known as Pine Island. This area has not produced much in recent years but I had a good feeling. When I got there the walkway out to the small island was flooded as I knew it would be, so I wet waded out to it. I stud there soaked to the balls and thought to myself ” I deserve a fish for this” but experience has told me many times that “deserve” does not hold water over here. This time it did! I landed a powerful 6lb grilse on a Sunray Shadow and rose 2 more. As wet as I was, I happily walked back to the van.

Shane Flaherty (Fuzz) and Myself fished Kylemore Lough yesterday. Conditions were Ideal apart from the lake being too high. We fished hard and had 3 seatrout to 1.5lbs, a nice brown and rose a salmon. 10 grilse were landed on the river the previous day.

Today I took my cousin Paddy Creane, 11, out on Inagh for his first day fly fishing. He fished hard and well in very difficult conditions. The rain dumped on us continually and the wind blew. I asked Paddy, “are you cold”, “A little” he said,” but I’m not going in.. I’m wet too!, I love this, but its not as easy as I expected. It’s a challenge”. He got a brown and a sea trout and put his name in the Inagh trout register for the first time of many. Watch this space!

We have had a load of rain in the last few days and the Ballynahinch/Inagh system should fish very well in the coming week. The same is true for the entire Kylemore fishery. If your thinking about coming over now is the time! Contact details in my previous blogs.

Tight lines!

Ronan..

On warm, sunny days when trout or salmon are unlikely to take a fly, pollack will always oblige. I went out to Deer Island, about 45 minutes from Roundstone in my boat last Monday to target them. I brought my 11 year old cousin, Patrick, out with me. I set up a boat rod for him with 6 feathers and a 6oz weight and it wasn’t long til the rod hit the gunnels! I didn’t help him. He got stuck in and hauled what turned out to be 3 good pollack from from the depths. It made my day watching Patrick battling to get the fish into the boat. I filleted the fish for him, He made a fiver on one and fed the family with the rest. A proud moment no doubt!

I had a few pollack on the fly and a sandeel. No sign of any mackerel yet which is strange.

The highlight of the week for me was on Lough Inagh at 11.30am yesterday morning. I was fishing a sinking line in shallow water. As i raised the rod tip to recast, bringing the bob fly towards the surface, a salmon nailed the fly, jumped, then took off ripping line off the floor of the boat before making the reel sing for about 70 meters. What a fantastic moment! I kept in control of the fish as much with the engine as the rod and reel. The salmon weighed 8 or 9lbs and took a silver and red daddy. I was using 6lb flourocarbon.

Have a great weekend! I’ll be busy on the water..

Ronan..

It’s been a mixed week of fishing. I’ve been doing some guiding for anglers after salmon, chasing pike and trout on Corrib, targeting monster browns on Lough Inagh as well as seatrout, salmon and normal sized browns. One client had an arctic char, they’re very rare over here and usually small, but very pretty and there is something very special about catching them. Unfortunately i didn’t get a pic! In my 16 years fishing Inagh I’ve only had about 7 or 8 char.

I have no idea what’s in store for the next few days.. I might target pollack around the rocks from my boat, might try for a salmon, might be working!

By the way, if anyone wants to hire me as a guide, give me a call! +353 87 770 1986

For info on staying at the Lough Inagh Lodge call Maura on 00353 95 34706 or log on to http://www.loughinaghlodgehotel.ie/

For fishing bookings and info contact Colin Folan on 00353 95 34706 or 00353 86 867 9459

Have a great August bank holiday!

Ronan..

Conditions at 9am were perfect. Within the first hour John landed a hard fighting 2lb+ seatrout on a Silver Stoat. During the battle I noticed a wall of wind and rain charging down the lake in our direction. It was with us for the rest of the day. We battled on fishing known salmon water drift after drift, A drogue made the drifts last a reasonable amount of time, without it the fishing would have been even more chaotic than it already was. At times, going back up into the wind to start another drift really got my adrenalin pumping. Wind and waves so strong at times the boat hardly moved forwards, To open up the engine would mean disaster, even as we were going the boat occasionally took on water. This is fun though! Watch the waves and gun it when you can. There was so much water coming back on top of me from the boat breaking through the waves, Sometimes stinging my face and eye’s, that wearing a hood or cap was pointless! Your getting wet, that’s all there’s too it, keep bailing. We would always start the drift well above where we normally would to allow the drogue to grab. Then we had relative peace again until the end of the drift, a little wetter than the last.

Kylemore Lough is a stunning place to fish. I’ll be back when the conditions are more favorable!

For bookings contact Nancy on 00353 95 41143 or http://www.kylemorehouse.net/

I just tied up a few flies for fishing on Kylemore lough in Connemara, Co. Galway tomorrow. It pays to have a range of flies in varied sizes and colours for lough style fly-fishing. Bushier flies on the bob, then getting more slender and streamlined towards the tail. These flies are tied with seatrout and salmon in mind, but they will also work for browns.

Ronan..

I sort of went off the radar for the last while. Women, drinking and getting stitches in my hand were all to blame. I had one blog to write about early morning caenis feeders but to be honest, the day in question was almost identical to the other blog I wrote on the topic.. The only difference was Johns brother Damien was with us. I’ll add some pics anyway.

The weather is fantastic right now and I’m getting motivated again. John just informed me about some late evening sedge fishing on Corrib. That will probably be our next venture. Hopefully tomorrow evening actually. Stitches in hand or not I’ll man up and get out there. Doctors are rarely right in my experience anyhow.

At some point in the near future I’ll be targeting salmon and seatrout, both locally and in North Co. Mayo and maybe Co. Sligo. Decent runs of fish are arriving and I dont want to miss the boat on this like I did last season.

I’m taking my boat out of Maam tomorrow and putting it on the sea outside my front door. Maam,at the Nortwest tip of Lough Corrib, has been absolutely useless this year so I wont waste any more time there. The sea will present some great fly-fishing opportunities for the rest of the summer. Lots of pollock and mackerel to be caught, there is talk of bass but I’m not holding my breath on that one, at least not around here. I hope to get down south to target them however. There’s a good chance of ballan wrasse on fly and maybe horse mackerel. Sandeels too. There are mullet around but they generally just frustrate the crap out of me. Yesterday evening they did just that.

So thats about it.. I’ve set myself up for some good blogs and I want to deliver on them. Time and this blog’s title will tell.

Ronan..

Ps. Tip of the week. Don’t buy an Airflo 40+ sinking line. They come apart at the joint between the running line and the head. I’ve seen it happen to the only four 40+’s I know of.

Also, on a totally different note, pardon the pun, I went to see a band recently that I’ve been enjoying.  They’re called Austra. Have a listen! This song is a good intro to the band but all their stuff is great. I like it anyway! Link at the bottom..

Oh, one more thing.. Get yourself over here Paul, It’s time!

Last Saturday Eddie Purcell, a great family friend and fly-fisherman, took John and I out on Lough Derravaragh. The lake is 8kms long with the Inny River flowing into and out of the northern end. Trout stocks are not high but they are big. We only had about 5 hours to fish so we decided to target pike as ideal water for them was evident. The first drift was about a kilometer long over perfect pike terrain. It was along a 15 – 20 foot drop off by reeds. I landed one little jack. Shortly after Eddie took us up the Inny river, a magnificent, wild spot with lots of bird and fish life. The fish were not giving themselves up easily but we had a few chances and landed another jack pike. I’ll have to come back here to fish for trout! According to Eddie they are the most beautiful trout you are likely to encounter anywhere. That’s a good enough reason for me!

More on early morning caenis feeders soon.. I have lots more grey hair since i started fishing for them!

Happy fishing all and a special thank you to Eddie for taking us out.

Ronan..

The only information we had on Lough Na Fooey was from a book by Oscar Wilde’s father from 1904. All it said was that there were huge pike present. Good enough we thought! The reason for fishing the lake was that we were going to a 30th birthday party on the lake shore that evening so we killed 2 birds with one stone. The fishing was bad. John and I rose a small trout each and Nigel lost 2 pike. One of those could (almost!) have been counted but John managed to knock it off with the net while attempting a new netting technique.

The party which followed lasted at least 2 days!

Dad and I had been on Ballinlough near Westport in Co. Mayo the day before (Friday). We had lots and lots of Rainbows between 2 and 4lbs on many methods including Big wets, lures, small wets, big dries, small dries, buzzers and nymphs. We were constantly changing to stay in control of the opportunities we were given.

I’m not sure what to do this week but whatever it is I’ll report back about it.. There are good numbers of seatrout and salmon entering the Ballynahinch and Lough Inagh system so maybe I’ll target them.

Good luck!

Ronan..

Fly-fishing brings endless new challenges and targeting Corrib trout feeding on Caenis at dawn is my latest one. John and I were on the water at 5am and we had the whole 44,000 acres to ourselves, at least we might as well have had, we didn’t hear another engine or see another boat until 11am. Neither john or myself had fished for caenis feeders before so we did a little research and tied a few dries to match the hatch. Our flies seemed good and fish started to move as soon as we set the boat up on the first drift. We were confident. Like fishing at dawn on the Great Lake in Tasmania most of the fish were traveling up the slicks (known as windlanes in Tassie but windlanes here could also be known as foam lanes so I’ll call them slicks so as not to confuse matters though I may already have!!). We did not get many shots and we each missed one fish. Watching the fish move to these tiny flies was worth getting up at 4am for. Its only a matter of time until we get it right.

The fish stopped moving to caenis at about 10am and for the rest of the day we switched between trout and pike fishing. Between the 2 of us, all we landed was a 12lb pike for 14 hours fishing but it was a good day and neither one of us wanted to get off the water.

I hope to get out again on friday at 4.30am. I also plan to fish Lough Na Fooey for pike and maybe trout too if I see any on Saturday. I will report back on those next week.

Until then, tight lines.. Ronan..

John was attaching a braided loop to his fly line on saturday morning. He asked me if I had superglue. I didn’t. I recommended that he tie the leader direct as those loops can come away on reverse contact with the top eye. He did it his way without superglue. I hoped i wouldn’t get a chance to say “I told you so”… A while later John’s rod broke about 18 inches from the tip at a previous repair (dont use old glass rods to fix modern rods!). He fished on with the considerably shorter rod without a problem and soon after hooked a pike. The fish was on the way to the net and the loop touched the top eye and slipped off. Down went the fish with fly, leader and almost the loop. John dived over 3 rods lying across the seats and grabbed the loop and handlined in a decent pike. I netted the fish and laughed. We both did. It’s nice to be able to say “i told you so” when the result is positive!

On the last drift of the day we were approaching rocks coming from deep water. When nothing but limestone was visible beneath the boat i said “Time to go, Pike never live around rocks. Fact!” With “fact” just out of my mouth a pike made me eat my words by nailing my fly. She was about 14lbs and came off at the net. John laughed and I know pike like rocks.

We’re out again tomorrow or Thursday.

Ronan..