Home Trout fishing reports Sheelin lures her anglers into 2025

Sheelin lures her anglers into 2025

March 11, 2025

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Lough Sheelin Angling Report, March 1st – March 9th 2025

‘Every time you come around, you know I can’t say no’

Bad Habits – Ed Sheeran

Silver lining – John Coyne with his first 2025 trout

Winter felt like an eternity, a long drawn-out torture to be endured by the Lough Sheelin angler. Weather patterns throughout the closed season varied from strong winds, heavy rainfall, snow and frequent pea soup fogs. Storm Eowyn on January 24th was the epiphany of misery with gusts of up to 135mph resulting in weeks of outages and trees collapsing like decks of cards, radically changing the landscape in many parts of the Sheelin catchment.

There was an old man from Cavan – Hughie McGahern who, when I was a child used to enthral me by his constant referral to the night of ‘the big wind’, not in his lifetime but obviously something carried down by his predecessors. He was referring to the Big Wind of 1839 which was Ireland’s worst natural disaster bring hurricane force winds, very rare in such a temperate climate, during the night of 6th – 7th of January 1839. This was during Twelfth Night, ‘when the dead walk’ and for many that was seen as more than a coincidence. Hughie was adamant that during this major meteorological event ‘the fishes were blown out of the lakes’ and for many who suffer the trials and tribulations of fishing Lough Sheelin, this event might of been appealing because at least they would actually see a Sheelin trout.

For the brown trout angler, winter and the close season are always much too long but then when the first of March comes along, like a saviour, suddenly the cold and steel grey expanse of Sheelin doesn’t seem that appealing and for many of the old familiars, although all permitted up, they don’t actually appear until buzzer fishing, around mid-April.

On Saturday, March 1st Lough Sheelin opened its waters once again to embrace a brand new fishing season. The weather was manageable on the day, with South Easterly winds and dry conditions. This lake was busy with entrance points quickly jamming up with boats and trailers, everyone seemingly wanting to get out fishing at the same time. Over seventy boats covered the lake that first day with similar numbers on Sunday. Numbers predictably dwindled during office days and the rose again to over fifty boats on the following weekend.

Water temperatures hovered around 7 degrees, with little variation with depth. The water is cold so the fish will be sluggish. The goal of the trout early season is to gain condition after the rigours of spawning and so they will head for the shallows where the greatest abundance of food is, typically shrimp or ascellus and hog louse but also other bottom feeding organisms like chironomid larvae, snails and caddis. Hog louse although fond of the shallows are also found in areas that are slightly deeper alongside rock features and across reed beds.

The bigger trout, of course, will be on a mission and that is to pact on as much weight as possible so more than likely will be after fry – a big meal with little effort. Catches of trout reflected this in that it was the lures that worked best rather than the traditional wet fly set ups. Humungous and Minkies were popular and scored the highest successes. Humungous patterns have always done well early season on Sheelin. Anglers reported seeing trout ‘fry bashing’ in the shallows so it makes sense that any lures with a flash of silver in their make up would work well.

DH anglers fishing club held the first leg of their seven-leg fishing competition on the lake on March 2nd. A total of ten teams participated, each team consisting of two anglers per boat. Conditions were challenging and only sixteen trout were recorded in total. The biggest trout measured in at 66cm landed by team Mikas and Tadas. This was a catch and release competition with a total of 845cm of trout recorded, with an average fish length of 52.8cm.

DH Anglers at Sailors Garden, Lough Sheelin

Best fishing tactics for the lures was using a line in the general range between Intermediate, Di3 and Di7. Best to use only one fly with no more than two meters of a leader length. A Minkie on the point was a good option.

The wet fly set ups didn’t feature this week, what with the cold, no fly life and the trout generally glued to the bottom after bigger dinners. Surfacing of fish only happened to bash the fry in the shallows so not an ideal scenario for the fly fisherman.

After the soft plastic lures, humungous and minkies, without a doubt the Dabblers in Claret, Olive, Fiery Brown, Golden Olive, Peter Ross, Pearly or Silver were a good bet.

Good areas for fishing were Merry pt. Gaffney’s bay, around by the Stoney Islands, Inchacup, Derrysheridan, Chambers bay and along the shallows from Holywell up to opposite Crover House Hotel. Fishing location on this lake is as always governed by wind direction so areas of success varied accordingly.

It all seemed to be taking off this first week and the stir of excitement among the Sheelin angling fraternity was almost palpable. However, Sheelin is Sheelin and as the days passed the bubble burst somewhat and angling catches became more sporadic. Fishing on Lough Sheelin follows the all too familiar pattern were soon the words ‘hard’, ‘difficult’ and ‘punishing’ start sneaking into the vocabulary. Lough Sheelin never changes and year in year out takes no prisoners, consistently making her anglers work hard for their piscatorial gold.

Lough Sheelin Guiding Services (www.loughsheelinguidingservices.com) 087 1245927

Grey Duster Guiding
Kenneth O’Keeffe
Tel: 086 8984172 Email: [email protected]

John Mulvany [email protected] 086 2490076

A snapshot of the future – a Sheelin trout redd

Competitions

The Kilroy Cup will be fished on Sunday, March 16th from Kilnahard pier with fishing from 11am to 5.00pm – details for the event are listed below:

Entry Fee €30
Competition HQ Kilnahard Pier
Fly-Fishing only
Catch, Photo & Release
RULES explained morning of competition
This is a LSTPA club members competition but non-members wishing to fish the competition can pay for club membership (€50) morning of competition.

There will be no permits available for sale on the pier on the morning so please buy your permit online beforehand or from the IFI office at Kilnahard on the morning. Contact Thomas Lynch @ 087 9132033

Please remember anglers to abide by BYE-LAW 949 which strictly prohibits from June 14^th, 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 1^st to June 16^th (inclusive).
To fish or to attempt to take or to fish for, fish of any kind other than during the period from March 1^st to October 12^th in any year.