The universal opinion is that weather has been absolutely dreadful recently as wintry winds continued to blow across the county bringing hail and heavy downpours. The wind’s often been up to gale force with almost daily small craft warnings in many coastal areas and numerous rivers have been running high and cold. Many would think that all the fishing would have been knocked on the head by the appalling conditions but at some fisheries almost the opposite is the case!

Darragh McCarthy with a fine bass on a IMA Susuke 140 in Cotton Candy
Darragh McCarthy wins Catch of the Week with a fine bass from Cork Harbour

Although salmon catches on the River Moy remained low on the lower river due to water heights this week, the upper Moy Fisheries are having a great spring, with 93 salmon reported for the week. The River Erriff has had its best Spring fishing for many years and some lovely salmon to 14lb were reported in the last week. Springers are being seen in numbers at Kylemore. Although the cold windy conditions has them keeping their heads down the prospects for the weekend are good. The Munster Blackwater had been having a quiet May but the last couple of days have seen some good salmon landed as the flood there has fined off.   On the River Lee 25 salmon averaging 11lbs each were landed for the week by club anglers using a variety of methods: shrimp, spinning and fly. Fresh fish are reported to be entering the Slaney and good reports continue to come from this prolific Catch and Release fishery. The first grilse of the season have been reported from the Drowes. Last week 20 salmon were reported and half of these were grilse.

The weather has made a right mess of the Mayfly season and there are only early signs of fly being up on Lough Corrib and Lough Derg. Although some greenfly are coming off a couple of the bays the hatch has not yet been prolific enough to see trout turn to feeding on them. The cold weather and bitter winds have obviously played a major role in this, though next week’s forecasted return to warmer weather should see a turn around in fortunes for trout anglers. In the meantime there has been excellent fishing on Lough  Mask, despite the severe weather conditions continuing, pushing water levels on the lough to almost winter heights. Olives and Buzzer hatched in huge numbers all week with trout taking full advantage. Some good trout were reported from Lough Sheelin but the fishing was slow over all in the last week. French anglers on the River Annalee have had some great fishing with a group of 4 catching 100 in a day and another pair landing 85 in a day – all released.

Not surprisingly sea angling has suffered the most from the weather with boat angling almost completely ruled out for most of the last 7 days. At a Fisheries Awareness Week event on Port Beach, Clogherhead, Co Louth lots of fish were caught and species included bass, flounder, plaice and dabs and even a few sea trout. All fish were returned unharmed to the water.

Bass closed season

Anglers are reminded that there is a closed season for bass from the 15th of May to the 15th of June each year. If you accidentally catch a bass during this period, just return him alive to the sea. Last week there were great reports from shore anglers in the Cork Harbour area with the outer harbour marks producing a number of good fish to plugs and soft plastics. But the fishing slowed down as the big tides peaked and were receding. The sudden swing of winds to the northern quadrant and a drop in temperatures didn’t help either.

In the Killeshandra area a group of 4 French anglers caught 147 pike, the largest 95cm over 5 days. Another pair of French anglers also in the Killeshandra area had 181 pike in one week the largest was 102cm. 2 Belgian anglers fishing in Longford had 55 pike in 5 days. Their guide Kevin Lyons of Melview Lodge commented that how they managed to fish in some of those conditions let alone catch 55 Pike was amazing!

Visiting anglers in the Longford area found that prebaiting helped beat the odds when fishing through the poor weather of last week. Some nice roach and hybrids were landed and good bream made an appearance also. Some Dutch anglers fishing in the Carrigallen and Killeshandra areas report good mixed bags of fish with some hybrids.  Bags of mixed fish to 40lb were reported around Belturbet.  At Carrigadrohid some super bream to 8lb 10oz were caught following a prebaiting session and good carp continue to landed on the Lough. At Brothers Lake some lovely tench helped Shane O’Reilly to victory at a competition held there on Sunday.

New Inland Fisheries Act – submissions invited

The Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Fergus O’Dowd, T.D. invites members of the public and interested parties to send written submissions for consideration by the Department in preparing a new Inland Fisheries Act. The new Act will consolidate, update and amend existing legislation which governs the conservation, protection, management and development of the inland fisheries and sea angling resources. The closing date for receipt of submissions is 5.30pm on 28th June 2013. More information at www.fisheriesireland.ie/Public-Consultation/public-consultation-on-inland-fisheries-legislation.html

Angling outlook

Met Eireann tell us the positively wintry weather will continue for a couple of more days. But it will become dry during Sunday morning and it will be milder than recently with temperatures recovering to more normal values for the time of year. Winds will become easterly, mainly moderate to fresh. On Monday it looks like being a dry day with sunny spells and temperatures climbing to the high teens. The further outlook in to the early days of next week looks mainly dry for now, perhaps just a few showers in places. Temperatures around normal for the time of year. Hopefully this will see an improvement in angling all round.

Tight lines,
Myles Kelly
Catch, Photo, Release

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IADA organised a great FAW event at Daingean
IADA organised a great FAW event at Daingean