Paddy Dunworth of Celtic Angling reports from the Maigue:
Florida based Bill and Patti Martin are on a 45th wedding anniversary celebration break in Ireland, a very active couple, they teed off at Ballybunion golf club on Monday just after 8am, then on to Adare and after quickly booking into the Dunraven Arms met me for a late afternoon session on the Maigue at 3pm. They were refreshingly honest in their admission of beginner status and were a pleasure to guide, the sun shone for them and the trout literally pulled together to make their fishing in Adare memorable, my photos tell the story.
On Wednesday last week, New Brunswick Canadian Douglas French joined me on the River Maigue at Adare, and whilst he’s fished for salmon back home, he never fly-fished for brown trout. With summer levels now a feature and weeds starting to show it’s really no longer practical to fish traditional wet-fly across and downriver. Fly-fishing down is entry-level fishing and comparatively easy, high-summer fly-fishing upstream in low, clear, weeded waters and doing so with dry-fly to ultra-shy wild brown trout in heavily overgrown surrounds is on a different scale entirely. We got around the low water by timing our wet-fly session to begin as the backwater at Adare was ebbing, this afforded us 2hrs+ of nice water and our rookie trouter Doug took full advantage. He had up to 10 fish, two very nice takeable ones, lost as many more and was thrilled with his day. All fish carefully released.