Ronan's Report

Typical of this time of year, it’s hard to make time to write! There’s more photos than I generally add but I hope you can make the time to enjoy them. They tell the story of a busy month of fishing and guiding.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot more lately is barbless hooks. It seems crazy that it’s taken me this long to really start moving away from barbed hooks. I was never too concerned about the barb. What I always told people was that I don’t have any trouble removing barbed hooks. This is true. The part that has always bothered me is breaking in a trout with a barbed hook left in his mouth, but it never bothered me enough to fish barbless. Now it does bother me enough. There’s a great relief breaking in a fish knowing the hook is barbless. There’ll be minimal stress on the fish since he’ll easily shake it free. I often heard that trout can dissolve a barbed hook quite quickly. I wonder if that is true? I should google it! The silly thing is I always knew that I’d loose feck all fish by going barbless. It only takes a second to crush the barb or better still, tie on barbless hooks to begin with. My range of flies with Fulling Mill are barbed so this is something I may look at changing in the future.

I had a solid month of guiding starting with Brendan and Dave. As usual for these two the rain came and blew out the rivers – it happens every time! We managed the fist day on a local river before they all blew out completely. Luckily, both of them love the lakes and we had some brilliant and varied still-water fishing with epoxy buzzers playing a very important role.

Next up was Tim and his brother Graeme. Great craic as always with the bros! Just about every fish was 5lbs. A very enjoyable few days.

Late in the month I had a new client. A man who knows my father quite well and fishes with him a lot back home. I also met him 25 years ago when I looked after the Inagh fishery for a season. His name is Jack Meredith. A very experienced angler who’s chased salmonids all over the world. I was delighted to show him around my area for a week. We mixed it up with local streams and rivers, backcountry fly-ins and highcountry dams. It was no surprise to me that the dams got under his skin. Anyone who fishes Irish loughs will have a head-start in understanding these special places, which are not for everyone. The fishing was very tough on the dams – but that’s not a bad thing. It just means you have to dig deep, fish to the conditions and persist – then enjoy the beautiful reward if you get one. Jack was not going to come back to the South Island after having a terrible experience a number of years ago. His guide didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing and spooked every fish in the river. I glad he changed his mind. I’m looking forward to next time.

A quick note about buzzer fishing (aka chironomid). This season and last season I’ve noticed a huge increase in buzzer numbers in many of the the lakes I fish and some rivers. On still-water days when fish have been hard, switching to a buzzer, usually epoxied, regularly made all the difference. I didn’t have a huge stock to begin with but my father can tie these in his sleep! One the phone one evening I asked him to send me a few which he did. Now I’m well armed with flies for these increasingly important tactics. Dad’s buzzers are particularly good too.

I’m very happy to say that my Fulling Mill patterns are now available in the new Patagonia shop in Queenstown. If you don’t live near Queenstown you can still order them online. They’re pretty much the only patterns I use. Check them out here.

Next season is just starting to fill up. Feel free to get in touch to make a booking or to chat about options. You can check out my website or email me ronan@sexyloops.com.

That’s all for now. Hopefully Decembers report will have a more user-friendly amount of photos. Tight Lines! Ronan..