Ronan's Report

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..