Most of our regular contributors are busy fishing or guiding this week, and reports are hard to come by today. What is known, however, is that mayfly fishing has been extremely patchy on Corrib over the last week. While the weather did “improve” from the hot sunny days of last week, with more southwesterly winds and showers, it has still remained very bright, and mayfly hatches have been patchy to say the least. Some good fishing was reported at times, particularly in the southern part of the lake, with some anglers enjoying good sport around the Lime Island area. Lonan O’Farrell from Galway fished with his dad Pat, and they had a purple patch on Sunday afternoon, with 12 fish to the boat in 3 hours, averaging 1-2.5lbs, but on the last drift Lonan had his Pearly Green Dabbler taken by a more sizable fish which gave a great fight, eventually coming to the net to reward Lonan with a 6lbs beauty.
Also enjoying Corrib was Willie Roche, fishing with longtime friend Conor Ledwith. Conor sent in a great photo of Willie with his best trout, which Conor reckons took a dodgy looking wet fly. We infer that Conor was fishing dry fly and enjoyed less success!
Ted Wherry (087-4305957) from Mayfly Lodge, Ballynalty Bay has also enjoyed some good sport with guests over the last week, particularly to the buzzer in the calm weather before last weekend.
The Kilbeg Anglers “Murphy” Cup competition was fished on Sunday, with a good number of fish caught, and fish to over 2.5kgs recorded. The winner was Alan Henney, with 2 fish for 3.01kg. In second place was Emmet Greaney with 3 fish for 2.891kg, and Pat Murphy was third with 3 fish for 2.511kg.
Before the weather broke, Dave Egan from Clare enjoyed some cracking fishing on dry fly and buzzer, with 14 fish over the limit landed and released, including 12 on dry fly (small olive patterns and adult buzzer), and two on buzzer nymphs. 10 of the fish were in the 1.5-1.75lbs range, but the other 4 all weighed between 4.5-6lbs
The forecast over the next few days is for unsettled, broken weather, cool at times, but staying showery, which anglers are hoping will bring on mayfly hatches and improve the fishing. I hope to have more reports next week of better hatches and angling!
