Irish Angling Update 3 October 2025

Amy is “her” name, and she’s sweeping in today from the Atlantic. The first named storm of 2025-26 winter season is upon us, with a RED WARNING for Co. Donegal this afternoon, orange warnings for several western counties, and yellow for everywhere else. There is also a RED WARNING for coastal areas from Loop Head in Clare to Fair Head in Antrim, so if you are near the coast take all precautions and stay well clear of the water. As I write the winds have really picked up here in the west, with very strong gusts.

Last week provided some lovely settled weather, which came to an end this week, with very heavy rainfall on Thursday and the imminent storm today. Hopefully it will settle down a bit after this!

For a change we begin our round-up on foreign shores, in Spain, where the World u-16 and u-21 shore fishing championships finished up yesterday. Some fantastic fishing by the irish teams saw the uner-16s  take the bronze medal, a brilliant result, while the under-21s were denied a medal on a count back, having tied with Italy and the Netherlands behind the winners Spain. Back in home waters, there were good reports from sea anglers around the country, who enjoyed last week’s settled weather. David Edwards, skipper of the Silver Dawn, reports on good blue shark fishing in west Cork.

Luke Aston reports good mixed fishing from west Clare, with pollack, scad, spurdog, tope and ray among the species coming to the boat. In Mayo, Newport SAC held their end-of season team competition,, where the stiff competition enjoyed plenty of sport, the highlight being Ciaran McGowan’s 62-inch Common Skate, our Catch of the Week.

Competitors enjoyed great conditions, if the fishing was a little tough, on various venues around the Dingle Peninsula for the modifed Daiwa Pairs event this year, but some fine fish were caught, including a fine sting ray off Inch beach in one of the pegged matches.

Up north, the Ulster Krakens competition at Cushendun saw some big catches, with anglers kept busy throughout. The winner, David Rainey, had an incredible 36 fish to take the win. And finally for our saltwater roundup, Jim Clohessy reports a welcome offshore run last week after losing most of September to windy weather, and hitting a couple of wrecks saw some good ling coming aboard.

The game fishing season has come to an end on many fisheries, although some continue into October. Better water on Lough Currane, which finishes on October 12th for sea trout, made for a good week, with 10 salmon landed, as well as good numbers of sea trout to 3lbs.

The season on the River Lee finished on Tuesday, with 17 salmon reported in the last week, and in west Cork, rain brought nice water for salmon fishing, with salmon reported off the Bandon, Ilen, Owvane and Glengariff rivers. |There were also salmon reported off the Laune in Kerry, and on the Erriff a salmon and a couple of sea trout for Damien Lavery saw the Erriff finish the season

In coarse angling, Munster Feeder Anglers kicked off 9 days of festival fishing on Inniscarra with the 1 day Celtic Masters Open, followed by the 3-day Inniscarra Feeder Classic.The fishing was off the charts, with the top 5 anglers in the open weighing in over 100kg! The weights continued in this vein for the Classic, and the fishing continues this week with the 4-day Celtic Masters, with more great weights reported already. Read the full report here.

On the River Shannon, Joe Nolan was top rod in the Portumna September Festival, where great daily catches of up to 21kgs were recorded.

And in Co. Leitrim, Ulster were crowned the 2025 NCFFI Inter-Provincial champions after the 2-day team competition at the weekend.

Pike fishing is really getting going now with the cooler weather, and in Co. Fermanagh young Ollie and friend Alfie enjoyed a guided session with Guided Predator Angling and enjoyed great sport, with fish of 101cm and 98cm their best fish.

Steve McDonagh from the Fishing With Steve YouTube channel is back on the bank, but this time, it’s river pike and not lake monsters that Steve is after. Check out the report and video here.

Bodo Funke also reports on a nice trip for a father and son duo from Austria, who caught good numbers of pike to almost 1m in challenging conditions.

Finally, 83 anglers took to Lough Ree for the King of the Lake competition, where just 13cm separated the winners from second place. With so many anglers on the lough, fishing wasn’t easy, but there were some smashing fish caught, including a longest fish of 112cm for one of the teams.

In other news

A public consultation is now open on three byelaws –

1. Conservation and Prohibition on Sale of Coarse Fish Bye-Law No. 806, 2006
2. Transfer of Live Roach Bye-Law No. 561, 1973
3. Conservation of Pike Bye-Law No. 809, 2006

Click the link above to get more information and find out how to make a submission.

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Inland Fisheries Ireland is running a public consultation on the agency’s Statement of Strategy for the next five years (2026-2030).

Anglers and angling associations are some of the organisation’s key stakeholders, and this document will guide IFI’s role in any future involvement with recreational angling and the angling sector.

To contribute to the public consultation, please take the time to review our Statement of Strategy Guidance Document and Make an Online Submission – which you can do here.

The public consultation will be open for submissions until Friday, October 17th, 2025.

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And now the weather…

Storm Amy is currently battering the western half of the country, moving on to Scotland this evening and tonight, but in the meantime, batten down the hatches!

Saturday will be wet and windy with strong and gusty westerly winds. A band of heavy showery rain will move down from the north. The afternoon will gradually become drier with just scattered showers and some sunny spells. Cooler with highest temperatures of 12 to 15 degrees.

Generally cloudy and blustery on Sunday with well scattered light showers; more persistent rain pushing in from the northwest in the evening. Highest temperatures of 12 to 16 degrees in moderate to fresh W/SW winds.

The outlook is for showery conditions in moderate to fresh SW winds, and max temps of 14-16C.