I care no more about the weather. It may blow, or pour incessantly from the heavens. Thunder and lightning, which recently plunged us back into the dark ages, may roll and flash. Frost might seal my boots to the floor, but I care not, for my mind is fully set on spring and the joys that it brings.
I have a favourite corner on the western shore of Mask, where every wind but one from the east is barred by a slope of hill with its alder and gorse, a sheltered, grassy glade where every scrap of sunshine warms the very air and brings new flowers while elsewhere they remain as buds. Before me the hill falls away to form a shallow bay. At the mouth of this bay regiments of trout parade up and down the drop-off to deep water.
It is here I shall be found after lunch and into dusk. At least, that is my goal. It is one of those places a man would live and never leave, and paint, perhaps, in the style of the great Romantics. I should like to paint.
B, a good friend and better angler, has gone to the Drowes in Donegal to catch a spring salmon. I imagine him up to his waist in freezing water with icicles on his nose, catching the slats that outnumber fresh fish by a hundred to one, while I toast my sandwich over a twiggy fire and pull a succession of trout to my sun-warmed seat……
The Mayo News 04/02/2014 Read the article ‘FISHING All’s fair in angling game‘
