Fishing journalist Rudy van Duijnhoven was on the road in southern Ireland with his fishing buddy Theo van de Poll for the last week of September. Here is his report:
‘The first stop was Greg and Sigi Latour’s Tir na Spideoga Fishing Lodge in Inchigeelagh, County Cork. For two days, Greg Latour guided us on Lough Allua, fishing a large number of promising spots with pike streamers. The north wind meant that the pike were hardly active, and the catch – despite the hard work – was limited to some small pike.
We then moved to Cobh, and switched our target to seabass. Richie Ryan of Cork Bass took us out on the water for a day in Cork Harbour. The strong north-west wind made fly-fishing anything but easy, there were big waves with foam heads in the harbour and the drifting of the boat was faster than desirable. After trying for seabass at a few locations, Richie sailed to the mouth of the harbour to try for pollock. Pollock again proved to be a fish you could rely on and with fast-sinking fly lines and small Clouser Minnows, several nice pollock could be landed.
Later that day, we tried some fly fishing from the shore for bass in and around the Cobh area, fishing a few different spots at different stages in the tide. After a lot of casting, suddenly, the fish became active, and we managed to get a few bass on surface flies, which was great fun.
We moved to Youghal the following day, and despite the strong north westerly winds, which made casting difficult, we managed to have the best session of the week. After landing a number of bass in the 40-50cm bracket on white/beige streamer patterns, we started to get some bigger fish, including a couple of 60cm fish, which were super fish to get on a fly rod. But even those fish were made to look small by a really good 70cm+ fish, which came to a white streamer about 10cm in length. In addition to seabass, we also managed to land mackerel and a garfish on the fly.
Before making the return trip to Dublin, we fished the same spot for a few hours the next morning. Due to changing conditions, with a weak south-westerly wind now, there was a much stronger tidal current. The catch this morning was limited to some small seabass up to 40 centimetres in length. Nevertheless, Theo and Rudy returned home very satisfied and are already looking forward to their next fishing trip to Ireland.’
Go Fishing…
Greg and Sigi Latour
Inchigeelagh, Cork
Ireland P12 KX62
Tel. +353 (0)26 47151
E-mail: irishpike@gmail.com
www.pike-fishing-ireland.com/fishing
Tel.: +353 (0)86 1940744
Email: info@corkbass.com
