The Irish Trout Fly Fishing Association held its annual Team Championship fund-raising competition at Lough Lene, Collinstown on Saturday 11th August. Twenty-f our teams from every part of Ireland converged on Lough Lene hoping to secure the Team Championship title. Each team was comprised of four rods and a draw was conducted to select angling partners. As usual this competition was conducted on a catch, measure and release basis with a point system being used to determine placings.
Anglers took to the water at 11AM with great expectations following reports that the lake had fished extremely well during the week leading up to the event. The day started bright and warm with a fresh south-easterly wind and most anglers made for Fagan’s Bay and The Cut areas of the lake, figuring that the rainbows may prefer calmer conditions. As is always the case it is impossible to predict these elusive trout and they proved very difficult to tempt to the fly. As the morning progressed it was evident that there would not be as big a return of fish as had been anticipated with only a few anglers being observed playing fish. The fishing did improve in the early afternoon when some cloud cover came and the fish seemed to switch on periodically. Fishing with sinking lines and slowly retrieving nymphs, boobies and blobs appeared to be most effective, however holding onto fish proved difficult as the trout appeared to be coming a little short to the fly.
Angling finished at 6PM and when the points were tallied it was the Team from Galway Corrib, which was captained by Mike Keady who won the Team Championship title with 799 points; other members of the team included Tom “Doc” Sullivan, Andrew Boyd and Jackie Mahon Jnr. Second place went to the team from Garrison Melvin who were captained by Darryl Grimason with 678 points; other members of this team were Freddie Steel, Brian Bingham and Niall Crommie. In third place were the team from Dromore who were captained by Jason Russell with 495 points; other members of the Dromore team were Harry McAteer Jnr, Neil cardwell and Mark Sloan.
Lough Lene is an excellent trout venue and with mayfly, sedge and snails all on the menu at the moment it is well worth a visit, you can try and tempt these illusive trout with small dry sedge patterns, various snail patterns and nymphs. Boat Hire and permits are available locally from Tom Fagan who can be contacted at 086 1691231. The Irish Trout Fly Fishing Association would like to thank Lough Lene Anglers for hosting this very important fundraising event.
