Lough Sheelin angling report June 2nd to June 17th 2025
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning”
Albert Einstein
Lough Sheelin feels like the ‘hill that I’ll die on’ – difficult, testing and fundamentally disheartening, a fight to defend this great lake even if it means significant challenges as the trout, although there, refuse to surface and when they do appear, it’s in single figures showing no interest at all in our artificial offerings. “Success is all about going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” this quote from Winston Churchill and of course the fact that this year, so far, all lakes have been the same, still doesn’t quench the need for Sheelin to be the best.
It has been quiet here over the past week. Most anglers are going out in the evening with only a few appearing during the day. Now in mid-June there have been still surprisingly good hatches of Mayfly particularly from Holywell to Crover, into Chambers Bay and around the islands but these have stayed around the shoreline bushes, with poor falls of spent on the water. Water temperatures hovered around 16 degrees with little variation from top to bottom. The days have been mostly humid with embedded thunderstorms and winds favouring southerly or westerly in direction. Some catches were recorded with the heaviest weight tipping the scales at 5.5lbs by Oliver McCormack caught on a Green Stimulator in Gaffney’s Bay. Trout were still being caught on spent patterns, mainly Wulffs and Goslings. With the tapering off of our Mayfly the fish have moved predominantly on to feeding on pinheads so fishing with silver flies in the shallows would be the best bet for daytime fishing. Angling has been most productive in the evenings with Murrough fishing being the most popular and most successful. Even when the lake was carpeted with spent, the most successes were on a single good scruffy Murrough pattern but I had been sworn to silence up until now on that one.
The insect life has eased away from the mayfly to be replaced almost fully by the sedges with terrestrials in the mix. The transition from Ephemera to sedge has already been in evidence over the past number of weeks with the appearance of the Great Red Sedge – the Murrough as well as a vast number of species of smaller sedges present in considerable numbers particularly around Church Island, Stony and Derry Sheridan. There are reputedly a bewildering 300 different species but for the sake of Entomological sanity, anglers really just need to know a few of the basics – a small brown sedge, the Cinnamon, the Welshman’s Button, the Murrough and the Green Peter.
Sedge is late evening, twilight and after dark fishing. The sedge pupae makes for the surface with an impressive turn of speed and emerging onto open water it must get to safety as quickly as possible before being eaten by a marauding fish. Trout feeding on moving sedge hit their meal with a tell tale slap as they pounce on the doomed sedge scurrying across the water in its attempt to get to a safe haven.
Summer is all about the sedges and according to the fishing gurus sedge fishing is reputedly supposed to be ‘the cream’ of trout fishing. This might be the case for other lakes but Lough Sheelin isn’t just any lake, her fish don’t obey the human rules, they do their own thing, hell bent on causing her anglers as much mental anguish as possible and in a way this along with the heavy wild weights is the attraction.
During the day time and into early evening wet mayfly patterns worked well and in particular the French Partridge, although I am told any wet mayfly pattern would do. A person could get lost in the confusion of mayfly patterns out there, unhelpfully referred to as ‘wet mays’ but the patterns that keep appearing and producing successful fishing have been the Klinkhammers (Green and in Yellow), the Octopus, the Gosling (good as a top dropper), an Emerger Yellow Mayfly and the Olive May Muddler (an excellent pulling fly that can be greased up if you want to fish it on a floating line). My favourite has to be Peter Hehir’s Lissane Lady which regardless of attracting a number of 3lb plus trout this week is just simply lovely to look at with of course having the added bonus of being great in a team of wet flies, in a rolling wave, fished on an intermediate or floating line.
A number of fish were caught using Spent patterns and it was the Wulffs which featured most – grey, green and royal. Aiden Rush’s ‘Lough Sheelin Spent’ and Mick Kelly’s ‘Leggy Black Spent’ were also favourites.
The most successful flies this week were the Mayfly nymph patterns, wet Mayfly patterns in greens with mixes of brown and claret mingled through, , the French Partridge, the Goslings, , CDC Mayfly Emergers, the Wulffs (grey and royal), the Spent Gnat patterns (a predominance of black worked best). For the sedge fishing a small brown sedge pattern (size 12) fished dry and Murrough and a balling buzzer on the dropper got results. Wickham’s Fancy, the Cinnamon Sedge and Black Gnat dry fly also got a look in. Other patterns catching fish were the Dabblers (Claret, Green and Silver), Stimulators and Bumbles (Golden and Cock Robin).
Sheelin Fishing Guides:
John Mulvany johnmulvanyfishing@gmail.com 086 2490076
Please remember anglers to abide by BYE-LAW 949 which strictly prohibits from
June 14th, 2017 onwards:
- The taking of any brown trout of less than 36 centimeters.
- For a person to fish with more than 2 rods at any one time.
- To fish with more than 4 rods at any one time when there is more than one person on board the boat concerned.
- For a person to take more than 2 trout per day.
- All trolling on the lake from March 1st to June 16th (inclusive).
- To fish or to attempt to take or to fish for, fish of any kind other than during the period from March 1st to October 12th in any year.
Heaviest trout: a 5.5lb trout caught by Oliver McCormack on a Green Stimulator in Gaffney’s Bay
Number of trout recorded: 25
Selection of catches:
Vincent Kelly, Cavan – 1 trout at 5lbs on a Green Peter.
Eamonn Ross, Cavan – 1 trout at 2lbs on a Dabbler.
Sean Guider, Cavan – 1 trout at 1.5lbs, June 14th on a Green Peter.
David Jones, Dublin – 1 trout at 4lbs on a Murrough at Sailors Garden.
John Brady, Cavan – 1 trout at 3.5 on a Red Arsed Green Peter.
Declan McEvoy, Wexford – 1 trout at 3lbs on a dry Sedge pattern.
