I'd been looking
forward to this trip for a long time, 10 days of staying with family
and fly fishing in the picturesque setting of the west of Ireland.
The unusually wet summer unfortunately seriously affected the height
of the river local to where I was staying, the Clare. The river was
almost a meter higher than it had been on my last visit, and it's
water, which is usually as clear as tap water in the height of
summer, was peat stained, the colour of over brewed tea.
The river Clare has a
reasonable run of salmon and given the high water I concentrated on
trying to catch one. I've never before caught a salmon, and have
almost no experience salmon fishing. I fished for several evenings
using my single handed 9ft 7# rod, swinging an orange shrimp fly down
and across. I don't think I was fishing deep enough and I'm not even
sure that the fish could have seen my fly in the high and coloured
water. It's no surprise then that no salmon were caught during my
trip. That elusive first salmon will have to wait .
I tried my hand at
trout fishing in the swollen river, placing nymphs in pockets of
calmer water, in the slacks created by boulders and cowslips. I found
one rising fish in a large slack in a cowslip located behind a
section of stone wall that extended into the stream. I covered it
with various nymphs and dries, all to no avail.
On one of the days with
better weather I tried fly fishing in the sea, casting small shrimp
imitations into the waters of a beautiful sandy bay. No fish were
caught.
I met up with a work
friend of my uncle's , who has a boat on Lough Derg. I spent the day
chasing trout on the fly. I was informed by him however that it was a
bad time of year for fly fishing for trout. Apparently the sport
wouldn't improve again until late august. The Lough was beautiful,
and the weather fantastic for being out on the water, albeit not
ideal for fishing. I saw what I believe to be a pine marten scurrying
along the wooded shore a sheltered bay as I stopped fishing for
lunch. At first I thought it was a mink until it proceeded to climb a
nearby tree.
The highlight of the
trip was a day I had on Lough Corrib with a local guide, John
O'Malley. We spent the day fly fishing for pike, something I'd never
done before. The casting took a while to adjust to and wasn't helped
by a very strong wind. The fishing was great, I was getting hits from
pike almost as soon as I could cast the fly a decent distance. I soon
managed my first pike on the fly, a beautiful fish estimated to be
around 7-8lbs. The fight on the fly rod was incredible, I've never
had a pike fight so hard on spinning or bait gear. I went on to catch
two more pike that day, one of around 3lbs and another around 6lbs.
John managed to catch an impressive high double, around 17lbs in
weight, it fought ferociously; landing such a fish was a two man
effort as I had to pull in the drogue and assist in taking the fish
onto the boat. Both of us had a lot of hits that day, and hooked
several more fish. We were very unlucky not to have brought more fish
to the boat.
