While much of the country celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in the pub or at one of the various parades, for others, it means the first chance of the year to fish for trout in their local rivers. In Dublin, St Patrick’s Day marks the opening day on two rivers that run right through the city, the Dodder and the Tolka. Growing up in the Churchtown area, I remember getting the rods ready on the 16th for a dawn start on the 17th, as I headed to the Dodder to try and get to the best spots before anyone else. It was always a bit of a ritual, and there was a great sense of camaraderie all along the river on opening morning.
While it’s a few years since I fished on opening day, I took a walk down along the Dodder last weekend and was glad to see plenty of anglers out and about. It was interesting to see that the majority of anglers were fishing with small lures, whereas back in my day, it was worms, or what was often a killer bait for a big fish, a lip-hooked minnow. The lures seemed to be working judging by the Dodder Anglers Facebook Page, and it is great to see some quality wild trout can still be caught in the river.
On the other side of the city, the River Tolka provides a similar opening day ritual for ‘northsiders’, and browsing through the Tolka Trout Anglers Facebook page, it seems that small lures are also the preferred bait on that river. Their opening day competition seemed to be very well attended, with plenty of junior anglers taking part, and congrats to Jacob O’Leary who won the junior competition with a trout of 2lb 5oz.
The river most synonymous with Dublin is of course the River Liffey, and there are a number of angling clubs active along the river. One of those is the North Kildare Trout and Salmon Anglers Association, and they had a Catch, Photo, Release competition last weekend. 17 anglers turned out for the fly fishing only event, and there were some localised hatches of Large Dark Olive which brought the fish to the surface, giving some good action on the dry fly.
It’s great to see so many anglers out on their local rivers, and the fishing will only get better over the next few months, so if you live locally to any of these rivers, why don’t you get your hands on a rod and give it a go?
