The last fish of the season..

I got this 6 lb 14 oz beauty on the final day of the season on lough sheelin.

It took a silver invicta on the point.

I moved one other fish for the day but it just followed the flies without taking. Later I increased the fly size to try to induce a take, and this fish followed the flies again. This time I stopped the retrieve and waited for a few seconds, then lifted the rod. Thankfully he had the fly in his mouth at the time. :)

Back from Lough Corrib

I enjoyed my trip to the west. Lough Corrib fished quite well, I managed one trout and a Salmon Kelt, but I also hooked 5 other trout that failed to stay on. In all I rose about 12 fish, but most were either coming short or following the flies in. It seemed to be a problem with others I spoke to. Noel got a nice fish at the other end of the boat and missed one other. All the fish came to either a Golden olive bumble or a claret dabbler and they were up on the shallows. It was cold in a light south east to east wind, and there were no signs of fly life. I tried a drift over buzzer water first, but quickly realised that there was little or no chance of any buzzers hatching and decided to take a drift over a long shallow point, the winds angle allowed me to drift across it at an angle, giving me plenty of time to cover both drop-off edges and the shallow itself in one drift. Within minutes of setting up for the drift, Noel got his fish on a Claret dabbler and I rose four other fish including the Salmon kelt over the point.
We did the drift a further two times, I rose fish on each drift and caught my trout on the second drift across, by the third things had quietened down considerably, due possibly to the wind dropping almost to calm.
I did another drift then moving to 'Mollies rock' further out into the lake but a good drift over shallow water. I rose and hooked a good fish just off the rock, but again after a short run the hook pulled. We then decided to pull up on the shore for another cup of tea, we had stopped for one between the 1st drift and fishing the point, while boiling the kettle we realised time was against us and after tea we headed back towards home, intending to do one more drift closer to home, alas by the time we got there the wind was gone, so we decided to call it a day early. When we reached shore we found many had the same idea...but all in all, we both had fish and had seen quite a few. A good result for opening day.

I have been out fishing twice this week. On Tuesday I drove down to Lough Lene to meet someone delivering a new club boat for the lough. Obviously I had to road test it after delivery...Noel and I had a pleasant days fishing, I managed to get ten trout to 2.5lb (2kg+).
I was back to lough Lene yesterday fishing a team competition. Sadly I didn't catch as many, I did manage to catch 3 'keepers'(the competition was catch and release) and a couple of small fish that didn't make the measure. The rod average was about 2.5 fish so it wasn't too bad a result. The team (6 anglers) ended up with 20 fish, which was the third highest total, but our size average was lower and we ended up in 7th place. The days fishing was hard work, but my boat partner was a pleasant companion and we had an enjoyable day on the lake. I can't give you the successful flies because if you include the undersized fish we caught ten in the boat we both had three to measure and two undersized, all fish were on different flies! Yes, it was one of those days when you really had to work for your fish. To be honest though you feel good after the day when you manage to get a few in hard conditions. The team competitions mean you work that little bit harder too so you don't let your team members down. With the team competition you need to catch at least the average so that if one member does well you don't pull his score down, and try to catch above the average yourself to pull other members up. Therefor even one fish is important, every point counts.