Paul Waghorne reports for the last time on this year’s fishing pilgrimage to Ireland…
I entered the final week of my 40 day trip honestly believing the weather, and ultimately the water temperature would improve so I might be able to capitalise on the Inny Roach run. It has been over ten years since I last had the kind of returns that were once commonplace in the 90’s and early 2000’s. With the sad loss of John Cole last year who used to publish the ‘Innyangling.net’ web page and my good friend Peter Wood, whose eyesight has deteriorated to render himself almost totally blind, there are no locals or indeed anglers willing to report the phenomena that was once a roach anglers dream. Fish to well over 2lb were caught each year and the long gone ‘Inny Festival’ had, if memory serves me correctly, a match record of 203lb!! Nowadays, turning up at either Shrule or Red Bridge normally sees catches of just a few 2-3oz fish to which two friends of mine suffered that very fate last week
The water temperature was (Friday 15th May) was around 11.4°C and in my opinion nowhere near ready to risk valuable time and effort in hoping for a bumper catch. So the Royal Canal above Killashee was selected to find more Tench. Since my last visit a month ago (when both Tim and myself blanked) the water was considerably weedier. Two other anglers had a small number of Tench on the opposite bank and I had three to a shade under 4lb adding another at first light but despite many feeding, failed to add to my tally. In the evening I raked the swim and caught two quite quickly along with a lot of Rudd and a couple of Perch but was dissapointed with not getting any more of my intended target.
The following morning was very cold and only had 2 Rudd and 1 Perch. I hooked a good fish which stretched my No. 10 elastic at least 10 yards. I didn’t think it could go that far. The line (7lb bs) pinged and I lost the complete rig. As to what the fish was, I can only speculate. The whole worm and piece of corn might have been taken by a Pike, but I suspect a Carp. They are present in the section around Brannigans Harbour and were (illegally) introduced into Clondra Harbour over 25 years ago, so it is very possible they are in the Killashee/Kenagh area between the four of five locks.
With more rain forecast for Sunday and Monday, this fine weather angler called time on his trip in full knowledge that spring was far from over and a lot more fish could have been caught given an extra two weeks being at my disposal. I’ll just have to wait until September….
Spring Summary
April 8th – May 17th
Sessions – 64 (176 hours) 16 of which were blanks (34h 30m)
1 fish every 9m 35s
- Roach – 833 – 1lb 13oz – 44 over a pound
- Rudd – 129 – 1lb 5oz
- Tench – 110 – 5lb 7oz
- Hybrids – 11 – 1lb 9oz Roach/Rudd
- Perch – 8
- Pike – 5 – 16lb 7oz
- Bream – 1 – 5lb 10oz
- Trout – 1
- Minnow – 1
