Dan O’Neill, Fishery Manager at Mount Juliet, reports on the fishing on the Nore….

14 June: Summer is well and truly here and underway at the moment. Fly hatches are good along the Mount Juliet stretch during early morning hours, then later on in the evening. Dry fly was my main discipline of choice this week with a small bit of wet fly and of course my new favourite method of fishing leech patterns.

Starting at 04.30am Saturday and Sunday morning certainly had its advantages. Not only did I get to see the wildlife in abundance but it was refreshing and cool outside, something in recent weeks that I wasn’t used to. The feeling of cold air was refreshing and enjoyable but it was now time to make a game plan for my guest. We started by swinging a good-sized sedge. My set up here was a 4ft Di3 Poly leader with 6/7ft of .10 fluorocarbon. The Poly leader took me down a little in the water and in the deeper runs with wet fly I find this useful. Once you master the swing its also good in shallower areas where you can get the fly right past the noses of the trout and they can’t refuse mostly.

Greg Barbosa with a river Nore brown trout
Greg Barbosa with a river Nore brown trout

We did have to fish quite hard this morning for a decent sized trout. Most fish we caught were hugging the banks and took the fly hard. Trout started to rise as the morning went on so I reached for the dry fly box and we changed our leader set up to suit a size 20 dry fly. Passing over trout and watching them come up slowly and sip the fly gives a unique feeling. It never gets old and the feeling is the same be it the first time or 100th time. We did need to be quite stealthy on our approach which made for even more excitement. Watching trout sip from seams and putting our accuracy to the test is very special.

nore trout June

Using leeches in the deeper shaded areas worked quite well, I had some lovely trout and great sport with them. As the fish backed off the rise I switched to wet fly and we both had a couple of trout on a long cast as the sun was at this point quite strong.

rudd
A rising roach or rudd is a good test of your strike

Elsewhere on the fishery many guests fished and had some nice trout. I, myself, was testing out the Cadance 10ft 3wt for an evening’s Rudd/Roach fishing. I got plenty of Rudd/Roach on a size 20 olive, great fun on light tackle. I find fishing for these helps me with my striking and also timing of the strike.

carp
Carp will put any gear through its paces

Moving to the 11ft 3 micro Spey I managed a lovely carp on an elk haired caddis, watching the carp come up to the fly in crystal clear water was very special ,the rods well and truly christened over the weekend and looking forward to many more fish on them.

I will be running dry fly masterclasses for the next 4 weeks. Classes can be individual or for groups of up to 6. For a full breakdown of the class email or contact me on the below details.

Dan O’Neill APGAI
Cadence fly fishing ambassador

Go fishing…

For information on day tickets or memberships please call Dan on 0857652751 or email [email protected]

Mount Juliet

Address Mount Juliet, Kilkenny R95 E096 Ireland Mobile Phone: +353 85 7652751 Website: mountjuliet.ie

River Nore trout fishing