What seemed like an endless summer of sunshine wasn’t and Ireland’s brief drought has ended. But having said that the rain that has come so far is not really enough to bring rivers up enough to get anglers excited, but more is forecast… The winds that accompanied the rains caused difficult conditions for sea anglers in the last few days but they had enjoyed some great fishing last week and charter boat fishing seems to have been particularly productive.

Ashely's specimen tope wins Catch of the Week
Ashley's specimen tope wins Catch of the Week

Last week’s sunny weather made for very consistent fishing at Courtown where tope provided the bulk of the sport for charter boat anglers. It was a similar tale at Wicklow and on one outing a very impressive 21 tope, 8 ray, 10 huss, 12 gurnards and a few smooth-hounds were landed by the delighted anglers aboard Lisin. Charter boat fishing off the Clare coast has the same story – on a couple of sessions of 2 to 3 hours when there were up to 15 tope on the boat and almost the same number of missed runs. Reports from Sligo also feature great tope fishing and our Catch of the Week goes to Ashley for her 165cm tope caught with Sligo Boat Charters.

National Bass Programme – request for assistance

IFI has established a National Bass Programme to collect data on bass in order to provide scientific advice to support management and conservation of Ireland’s bass resource. Bass is Ireland’s only marine fish species which is managed for angling. The programme is being developed to determine the status of bass stocks and also to improve understanding of their ecology and biology in Ireland for the long-term sustainability of the species. All assistance with the National Bass Programme would be greatly appreciated. If you would be interested in sending IFI bass scale samples, we can provide you with a scale envelope pack. For more information follow this link:  National Bass Programme

Salmon anglers had a difficult week having to contend with bright days, high temperatures and low water. Fresh fish were in short supply but where they could be found there was always a chance one might take. There were 10 salmon reported on the Drowes last week, most on flies in the lower beats. Ballisodare was less productive than in recent weeks but some fine salmon were reported nonetheless. Conditions on the River Moy have meant angling effort has been extremely low, resulting in a catch of 164 for the week, with  80 of those coming off the Moy Fishery.  Anglers at Delphi found nymphing tactics worked well and fresh grilse were taken despite a 0 on the gauge. At the Galway Fishery salmon are still running in good numbers, and in spite of the hot weather, 26 salmon were landed for the week. The recent rain brought a small flood to the Laune and a few fish were landed yesterday, last week had been very quiet. At Lough Currane it was very slow last week with only a couple of juniors reported during the hot, bright days. Meanwhile the Owenmore Fishery is having the best run of seatrout for over 20 years with a good head of fish already in the lakes. The Lee has been running low, though hard work can pay dividends and one lucky angler reported a 13lb salmon last weekend. The Munster Blackwater is also quite low though a few salmon were taken following this week’s rains. All in all salmon anglers need a good fall of rain and most fisheries report shoals of salmon waiting to come up on the first good flood.

World Youth Fly Fishing Championships

For over 50 young anglers, their coaches, captains, managers, team mates, family, friends and supporters, all of the hard work, patience and practice was about the next three days as the FIPS Mouche 12th World Youth Fly Fishing Championship got under way at the five fishing venues yesterday. The Fane, Quiggery, Eskragh, Loughmacrory and Woodford Fisheries all hosted some of the Worlds finest young fly anglers, all of whom are bidding to take team and indiviual titles and honours at this years event. After the first day of fishing Ireland 2 is in first place.

In other trout news the River Suir has been fishing well in the late evenings and some great trout have been landed. Lake anglers in the midlands are turning their thoughts to the Green Peter. Though hatches of these scurrying sedges have been observed the fish have not yet turned to them and fry patterns continue to tempt the trout.

Coarse anglers fishing in the Longford area with Kevin Lyons manged to beat the bright conditions and though the fish did not feed well they still managed some good bags, particularly in the early morning and late evening. Along the upper Shannon fishing was described as patchy and Brian Bohan recommends that anglers tackle deep water venues if they are fishing through the brightest part of the day. He has found the evening session most productive recently. In the Killeshandra area three English anglers fishing Trinity and other venues report bags of fish up to 100lb with plenty of Bream up to 4lb.  Some nice Bream are also showing at Bells Shore, Bawn Lake while good mixed bags are being caught on Dereskit with plenty of Roach.

Keepnets

Coarse anglers are asked to keep in mind IFI’s advice not to use keepnets while water temperatures remain high. The recent rain and overcast conditions will help cool things down a bit, but as daytime temperatures are expected to stay in the 20s our advice still stands.

Pike fishing is in a bit of a lull at the moment but as the hard, bright weather gives way to dull and overcast conditions summer piking should resume normal service and anglers using top water lures and poppers should be treated to electrifying hits.

Prospects

Met Eireann tells us to expect good sunny spells and scattered passing showers tomorrow, a few heavy especially across parts of Ulster and south Munster with the ongoing threat of thunder. All areas seeing long dry spells too with some areas staying dry throughout. Rather warm, with highest temperatures 19 to 22 degrees and light to moderate southerly breezes.

The outlook is for the weather to stay quite warm and humid, warmest in the north and east. A moist and unstable southerly airflow will feed up fairly frequent heavy showers across the country; Atlantic counties of the northwest, west and especially the southwest bearing the brunt of these. Some of the showers relentless, merging to longer spells of rain with further spot flooding. Despite a showery regime, long dry spells are expected with warm sunshine at times too. Not exactly the best forecast, but the rain is badly needed in rivers and lakes across the country. There should be some great salmon fishing to report next week and coarse angling should improve too as water temperatures cool.

Tight lines,

Myles Kelly
Catch, Photo, Release

If you have an angling story to share with the Irish Angling Update please send it to contact@fisheriesireland.ie.

Headlines

Salmon fishing reports

Trout fishing reports

Sea angling reports

Pike fishing reports

Coarse angling reports

News clippings

Other news