Home Trout fishing reports Sheelin struggles in Spanish sunshine

Sheelin struggles in Spanish sunshine

April 15, 2025

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Lough Sheelin Angling Report April 7th – April 13th 2025

“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go”

William Feather

Fishing has been tough going on Sheelin over the past week. Bright sunny weather and winds consistently favouring an easterly direction resulted in a nasty combination for trout fishing. Daytime temperatures soared into the early twenties and Lough Sheelin duly responded by going quiet, her trout sinking further into the deeper cooler recesses of the lake. Water temperature peaked at 13.4 degrees at surface on Friday only to drop back to 11 when the chill of the weekend took over. There was slight stratification of the water column for the first time this season, but it was only a marginal 3 degrees of a difference from top to bottom.

Catching trout on Sheelin has never been easy but the weather combination of sweltering heat and easterly winds along with the copious amounts of food on the bed of this lake gave the trout just another reason not to head upwards.

With the rise of the water and daytime temperatures it was hoped that this would trigger decent amounts of buzzer hatches but this didn’t happen and anglers are only reporting sporadic handfuls of hatches, here and there in sheltered areas along Bog Bay, Finea and Goreport, nothing to get excited about. The swallows were noticeable on Saturday, skimming purposely along the surface indicating that there must be food there but not visible to the human eye and certainly not exciting our piscatorial friends.

For the past seven days there was really nothing happening on the surface, just a grey blank expanse of stubborn uncooperating water – no hatching insects or emergers struggling to get airborne.

Trout reputedly spend 90% of their time feeding sub surface which gives some sort of hope to those who want fishing product. Nymphs, or flies that imitate immature insects are fished underwater and there is always something happening under the surface. Like dry flies, nymphs come in a variety of styles and patterns. Technically nymphs are a type of wet fly. The term wet fly broadly refers to any fly fished under the surface of the water. That said, many anglers use ‘wet fly’ to refer specifically to traditional winged wet flies, which are usually slung or chucked at the water fished in teams of twos or threes. Nymph fishing is a slow style of fishing and not for the impatient. These patterns specifically imitate insects or crustaceans, generally don’t have wings and sometimes have a bead for added weight. With so many different types of nymphs it can be hard to decide what to use, it all depends on the day – wind direction, the fish and the location. If we were to isolate the tried and tested patterns to avoid getting bogged down it would be the Pheasant tail which is a simple and generic mayfly nymph, the Hare’s ear which is often fished as a mayfly or caddis larva, the Prince nymph which is a classic stonefly pattern and maybe the Zebra midge which fishes well all through the season.

The good thing about a windy day and a season that is slowly moving forward is that all those bottom dwellers are being stirred up and when eventually that switch is permanently flicked to Spring, these will start their development stages, eventually hatching as flying insects and providing plenty of variety for the nymph, wet fly and dry fly angler.

Although we are progressing in the right direction for the fly anglers, this week it was still all about the lures and large fly patterns – Black & Gold Humungous, Silver Humungous, Black Minkies with a flash of silver, Snakes, Woollly Buggers and Cats Whiskers using heavy lines which were reasonably successful in bring the heavy weights up from the lower levels of this lake.

The Dabblers are still in the mix with the best of them in Claret, Pearly, Silver, Green, Peter Ross and Silver.

The best fishing areas for this week have been along the rocky shores and exposed points – the shallows were the water is warmer and the food – shrimp and hog louse is plentiful and easy to access.

The best areas are Chamber’s bay, Kilnahard shore, Holywell down to Crover, Merry point, Curry point, at the back of Church Island and the south shore of Derrysheridan. Some trout still hold the depths of water though, so blind casting if you can cast your line where you think the fish might be and retrieve might trigger a take. Daily choices of fishing spots are governed, as always, by wind direction.

For now, Sheelin’s successes are still reliant on the bait lures and in second place are the large attractor patterns of the Humungous, Minkies and Snakes. Regardless of how difficult and unresponsive Sheelin can be, the anglers do not give up, for those who understand Sheelin and what it is capable of producing, the pain is always worth it and so they continue on each day, increasing in their numbers in the evenings and again at weekends but seldom giving in for it is of course the thought of hooking up with that fantasy weight which makes this capricious stretch of water simply irresistible.

Lures and flies

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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.