Ronan's Report

Right now I’m getting ready for the Electric Picnic Music Festival. Most of my preparation is listening to some of the multitude of bands that are playing to get an idea of who I want to listen to over the 3 days and nights. I also did some packing. Tent, clothes, poteen, camera, sleeping bag etc. I wont see water for the next 3 days unless it’s in a bottle and even that’s unlikely!

I’ve been busy with some non fishing projects lately but made some time to get out on the water. John and I targeted pike, trout, salmon (sort of!!) and pollack over the weekend with some success.

On Saturday evening I met John on the water with the family unit, Namely Bronwen and their daughter Georgia. This was one of Georgia’s first encounters with fly fishing. She is one.

I’ll be back next week (asuming I survive the next few days!).

Ronan..

These guys are in the Little Big Tent tomorrow night… Think I’ll check em out!

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..

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..

It’s a long time since I fished Lough Carra but it’s just as I remember it. It’s a large lake made up of lots of smaller inter-connected bodies of water. Its mostly shallow with a white marl bottom giving the water an unusual, unique green glow. The lake is known to fish well in high winds and Dad and I certainly had that on our day on the lake. It blew a gale for most of the day making fishing quite difficult but we had a good few chances and managed 2 fish a piece. The last time I fished Carra was about 15 years ago and I remember doing well on a claret and mallard on the tail under Dad’s advise. Once again the fly worked accounting for 2 of our 4 fish. There should be mayfly up on the lake at the moment but pollution has massively reduced fly populations. The trout appeared to be quite opportunistic feeders as a multitude of flies moved fish. I’ll get out on Carra again before the season is over.

Later..   Ronan..