I've been fishing again. Noel and I went to lough Owel as we heard a few fish were starting to be caught. The information was that fish were being caught around the Tyre and the small pumphouse....they were right!
I caught about a dozen, and we got loads when we trailed flies behing the boat motoring between drifts.... We had drifted over a mark (shallows just offshore) and I'd got two small fish and missed another good fish too, the drift was onto the shore, so with the strongish wind I needed to start the engine and motor out quickly...obviously the quick and safest way is to leave the fly line trailing until you move away from the shore... when I did it I got 3 fish on my team of 3 flies almost immediately (withing 20 feet) all around the pound and a quarter - pound and a half mark. This kept happening although with single fish, even in areas we weren't rising fish...to such an extent that I was worried in case my rod got pulled overboard by a decent fish..
Painting meantime is not on the menu...I am not going to go into the studio now, I just will organise myself and do other bits and pieces prior to travelling. I also will spend time with Christine as she leaves for Kuala-lumpur and Korea before I get back so we wont see each other for a month.