Fishery manager David McEvoy updated us on the 2023 season this week. A good read as always from David. Read on…

Another Year Drifts By

It’s hard to believe that we’ve reached the end of another fishing season here at Delphi. In some ways the 1st of February seems like yesterday and in others it seems like aeons ago. We’ll all have plenty of tidying up to do on fishing gear and that, in the next week or so and before we know it, we’ll be dusting off the rods again in the hope of that elusive Springer.

It’s been just over a month since my last update and we were relatively quiet for the first two weeks of the month and we even managed to get 7 days in a row without any rain at all, the net result being that the river dropped to 1 on the Gauge for the first time since the 18th of June. It wasn’t ideal for salmon fishing as it often becomes increasingly frustrating, especially when one can easily see the fish. On Thursday the 7th the temperature actually reached 27.1 degrees at our automatic weather station at Doolough. As an aside if ever any of you are pining for Delphi weather, all you have to do is google wow.met.ie and you’ll basically get a map of Ireland, and you just enlarge the map and tap on Doolough and it gives you the weather data for the day since midnight. It updates every 30 minutes. As a result of this beautiful spell fishing was not terribly high on the agenda.

Many tried but salmon were playing hard to get, with sea trout being a lot more co-operative. We are often blessed with the customers we have, in that luckily “catching” is not the be all and end all. During the fine spell we had a wonderful group from the City Flickers club in London. This is basically a club set up by Lucy Mantle of young (20’s and 30’s) up and coming anglers who generally work in London, and when most of your customer base is now my age and older these are like a breath of fresh air and hopefully, they will all continue their piscatorial passion, well into the future.

Rainfall amounted to 271.8mms (10.7”). Our weather became more Autumnal from mid-September on and, as a result the salmon became a little more active. First of the month was landed by Constancio Merchante from Spain on the 16th. The fish was his first ever, weighing 4lbs15ozs from the Grilse Pool on a very lightly tied Willie Ginn single. Finlough is stuffed with fish, but they were very difficult to tempt. We had serious rainfall amounting to 113.8mms (4.48”) between the 23rd, 24th and 25th and the Gauge went to 110 on the afternoon of the 24th. Sean Kelly from the US had two that day, one from the Turn Pool of 4lbs14ozs and the second from the Middle River of approx. 5lbs. He had another the following day, again from the Middle River of 3lbs2ozs, all on a Delphi Collie. John Phelan also had one on the 25th from the Quarry of approx. 7lbs on a Willie Gunn. Richard Tattersall landed one on the 26th from the Goat of approx. 4lbs on a Delphi Collie. The dynamic duo of Liam Dunne and Paul Smyth had a fish each off Fin on the 28th of 6lbs3ozs and 4lbs1oz respectively on an Excutioner and Delphi Collie. The 30th finished up as usual with an open day and fish were more inclined to take, especially since many of the items being presented were unique to them! Total landed for the day was 23, with Eoin and Rory Smith, Vadim Baclanov and Svetoslav Nino all managing to land their first ever. Bradan Boland had the best of the day of approx. 14lbs. That brought our total for the month to 31 and for the season to 260. Having said that, I believe that there are definitely more fish in the system this year and Finlough in particular. Sea trout provided some good sport for those who targeted them, with 91 for the month and 261 in total for the year.

Thank You

Finally, I must thank all who helped and supported us throughout the year. Good customers make our job so much easier and often reminds us why we do what we do. Thank you all! D.McEvoy

 

Go fishing…

At Delphi Lodge, with many years of experience with the timing of the best runs of fish, we have in place a price system that offers both great value fishing and lets our anglers know when they have the best chance to catch a fresh run spring salmon or a summer grilse or Delphi sea trout.

Delphi Fishery
Delphi Lodge, Leenane, Co. Galway.
Tel: +353 (0)95-42222 Fax +353-95-42296
Web: www.delphilodge.ie