Lough Sheelin Angling Report By Brenda Montgomery, IFI August 8th – August 21st 2016

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.

~William Wordsworth

The reflective beauty of Lough Sheelin – August 2016

There’s a well known saying by Benjamin Franklin which goes ‘in this world, nothing can be certain, except death and taxes’ and so submerged in the throes of the Olympic games over the past few weeks, a highly excited and overwhelmed sports commentator added to this by saying that there’s a third surety and that is that Jamaican athlete, Usain Bolt will win the 100 metre sprint. Tentatively I would like to tack on a fourth to diplomat Franklin’s statement and that is that Lough Sheelin carries one of the best wild brown trout stocks in the world and given the right conditions, the fishing on this jewel of water is unbeatable.
The fishing on Lough Sheelin over the past few weeks has been very good with a rumour that an angler has caught a specimen trout, tipping the scales at over 12lbs. There is a photograph, which I have as yet to prise from the publicity shy captor. Until photographic confirmation has been achieved the heaviest fish over the past two weeks has been an impressive trout of over 8lbs caught by Navan angler Christopher Defillon using a sedge pattern.

The weather has been consistently warm with wind direction and strength as always dictating the calibre of the fishing on this lake. Trout were continually on the move, rising and following flies but although anglers were experiencing large number of follows and takes, the percentage of catches were low. The trout chased and hammered into the artificials as soon as they hit the water but this in itself created a problem in that it was impossible to lift at the same time as the hit. The wind was a total deciding factor on how the feeding trout behaved, a soft wave resulted in the trout following and slamming into the flies but to get the take that was needed required a wave of a better height. As the wind dropped the fishing changed, and a change from East South East would be a guarantee to put the Sheelin trout down.

The Catches

Methods of fishing were again dictated by what was happening on the weather front, with the bulk of the days where it was all happening below the surface. Wet fly fishing with an intermediate line perhaps had the edge over the dry fly enthusiasts but when the wind behaved itself there were plenty of trout rising and taking the dries.

Areas that fished best over the past fortnight were the Long Rock, Lynch’s pt., around Church Island, Chambers, Stony, Merry pt and from Derrysheridan down into the Bog Bay.
Bays, inlets and shallows are always good places to cast a line.

Anglers are consistently reporting large numbers of small trout and it seems that Lough Sheelin is alive with 1 ½ to 3lb fish but punctuating these small guys are the heavy weights with catches of 4, 5 and 6 pounders scattered throughout the returns.

Please remember All anglers are required to have a Fishery Permit to fish Lough Sheelin which must be purchased BEFORE going out on the lake.

The heaviest fish for this week was a trout of over 8lbs caught by Slane angler Christopher Defillon using a sedge pattern.

Total number of trout recorded : 128

Selection of Catches

Enda Kenny, – 1 trout just shy of 5lbs on a dry Sedge pattern.

Tony Lyness, Dublin – 15 trout in two evenings, all on sedge patterns, heaviest at 3lbs. 11 trout on August 12th, 4 on August 7th.

Cian and Dara Murtagh, Cavan – August 7th 3 trout heaviest was 3lbs using wet Daddies

Des Elliott, Dublin – August 9th to August 11th 9 trout averaging 1 ¼ to 3 ¾ lbs, caught on wets – Golden Olive and Sooty Olive.

Dara & Cian Murtagh, Cavan – August 12th, 5 trout up to 2 ½ lbs, 3 on Leggy Sedges, 1 on a Red Tailed Green Peter and 1 on a Sooty Olive.

Liam Enright, Coolock – 2 trout heaviest at 3lbs, all on wets, August 18th.

Peter McArdle, Dundalk – 11 trout, averaging 1 ½ up to 2lbs, saturday August 13th.

Pat Brady, Cavan – 10 trout, heaviest at 3 ½ lbs using Detached Daddies, Stimulators and Golden Olives.

Mark Kellett, Dublin – 14 trout for the week, heaviest fish at 5 and 6lbs caught on lures and wet flies – Sooty Olives and Bumbles.

‘Fish Fingers’

Two happy anglers at the LSTPA youth day, Sheelin August 13^th 2016 – 10 yr old Davin Reynolds and 9 yr old Conor Tynan

On Saturday August 13th the LSTPA held their first youth day at the IFI base at Kilnahard. This popular event was enthusiastically attended by a number of our ‘future anglers’ ranging in age from 7 to 16. The day included fly tying, fly casting, bird and plant identification and some fishing with a Bar B Q to finish off a perfect day.

Please remember anglers to abide by BYE-LAW 790 which strictly prohibits

• All trolling on the lake from March 1st to April 30th (inclusive).

• From May 1st to June 15th – no trolling between 7pm –6am and no trolling under engine between 6am – 7pm and

• June 16th – October 12th – no trolling under engine between 7pm – 6am.

• No trout less than 14 inches should be taken from the lake

Caoimhe Sheridan, Cavan

It won’t work if you aren’t wearing it…
Water rarely gives second chances and a life jacket is just that – it saves your life, so we would implore anglers and all other users for their own safety as well as it being the law under

SI No 921 of 2005 – Pleasure Craft (Personal Flotation Devices and Operation) (Safety) Regulations 2005

This week, The Irish Times reported that ‘more than 100 people drown each year in Ireland’.

Please remember All anglers are required to have a Fishery Permit to fish Lough Sheelin which must be purchased BEFORE going out on the lake.
A catch & release policy is actively encouraged on the lake at all times

The Competitions

On Sunday October 2nd Lough Sheelin’s angling club The Lough Sheelin Trout Protection Association will host their annual Stream Rehabilitation Competition starting at Kilnahard from 11am to 6.0pm.
All proceeds of this event go towards the enhancement and rehabilitation of the rivers within the Lough Sheelin catchment.
The club and organisers of this competition, now in its eleventh year, welcome all anglers who wish to fish one of the best wild brown trout fisheries in Ireland and to experience first hand the magic and allure of this lake which has the potential to produce the heaviest trout in the country.
For details please contact Eamonn Ross @ 086 6619834/ 049 9526602 or Thomas Lynch @ 087 9132033

Trichostegia minor – this is one of the smaller caddis flies

The Hatches and the Flies

The sedge, belonging to the Trichoptera family also known as ‘a caddis’ is an aquatic moth like creature with tent shaped wings and long antennae. They lay eggs while dipping and fluttering across the water surface. The trout have to move fast to catch them and therefore the rise form is a splashy one. The sedge pupa is rather a fast mover by nymph standards and trout feeding on these do so with a characteristic ‘whorl’ or giant swirl. There are reputed to be over 400 species of sedges but really only 20 that are of interest to the Sheelin angler, one that has made an appearance on Sheelin is a small sedge identified as Trichostogia minor with the possible claim to fame as being one of the first to have made an appearance in Ireland.

The sedge fishing has always been exhalted as being the cream, the icing on the cake as it where, of the trout fishing calendar and certainly for the 2016 fishing season here, this has been the case. Traditionally after the lull of the mayfly and spent, July and August would be quiet and sluggish months on Sheelin and the ‘pick up’ in angling wouldn’t occur till late August and into mid- September but this year things are different with fishing improving from late July onwards and being excellent throughout August. The sedge hatches have been consistently good, with the silverhorns present in large numbers predominantly around the shallows and the small brown sedges in large hatches around Church Island, Stony Islands, Merry pt. and Curry Rock. The Green Peter although dwindling considerably were still in evidence, making sporadic appearances in the late evenings and as the dusk faded into darkness particularly in Goreport , Sailors Garden and around Wilson’s pt. The Red Tailed Green Peter patterns proved to be very popular and featured strongly in the recorded trout catches.

With Silverhorns, Welshman’s Buttons, the odd Murrough, the Green Peters and a multitude of small brown and silver sedges, August undoubtedly has been the month where the sedge had the edge on Sheelin.

Buzzer fishing improved dramatically over the past week, with large spirals of these insects, like miniature thin tornadoes visible in the late evenings particularly around Church Island, Goreport and down into Bog Bay.

The terrestrials had their place on Sheelin with ants, beetles, daddies and grass hoppers among the many land flies that were blown accidentally on to the lake’s surface. Terrestrials are doomed once they land on water and if it is windy they will quickly drown and sink, so imitations do not need to be moved after casting out. Most of these insects are not difficult to imitate, most of them are black and shiny. This is why so many successful traditional wet flies are predominately black with a touch of silver, for example the ever popular Black Pennell and the Zulu. These are excellent imitations of drowned adult flies and beetles when fished below the surface and therefore do well on windy days. For the beetles something that incorporates black plastozote foam to increase buoyancy and a few Black or Claret Hopper patterns tied on to size 12 and 14 hooks will imitate many of the terrestrials. Trout cannot hide the fact that they are taking terrestrial flies from the surface, they sip them down very delicately and sometimes you have to watch the water and floating insects to see them. Trout often patrol the line where an off-shore wind first begins to ripple the surface and floating flies are often sipped down when they are found.

Albert Berry presenting Oliver McCormack with the McDonnell Cup, August 6th Lough Sheelin

There is one common August terrestrial that is neither black nor small and is much loved by trout and that is our Daddy-Long-Legs or Crane fly. The numbers vary considerably from year to year but there is a healthy enough smattering of them on Sheelin’s shoreline bays to merit the angler’s attention. Their larvae, known as Leather Jackets, live in the soil of grass and the adults emerge now in late summer, peaking in September. ‘Daddies’ are clumsy poor flyers and inevitably on a breezy day when they are emerging some get deposited on the water and the trout go mad for them. There are many artificial Daddy fly patterns. They all work but one small bit of advice is to choose one where the hackle is cut down as much as possible so that as much of the body and those familiar trailing legs are in the surface film. If the trout are swirling under the artificial and not taking it then it’s time to attack it with the scissors again to remove whatever is holding it above that film.

Trout were feeding on daphnia so the Stimulators in vibrant oranges and yellows along with the gaudy Executioner (normally a salmon fly) landed some fish up to 4 lbs. Simillium was there as well so having a few black gnat patterns to break the sedge fishing proved to be a good plan.

There was no particular part of the day or evening which fished better than any other, good fishing times paralleled good wind conditions.

The most popular flies were the Red Tailed Peters, a variety of small dry Sedge patterns (sizes 14/16), leggy Sedges, Cinnamon Sedges, Golden Olives Bumbles, the Dabblers (Silver, Sooty and Peter Ross), the Grey Flags, the Stimulators (Grey, Claret and Bling),the Black Pennells and the Black & Peacock Spiders. Some lures were used on sinking lines – di3 and 5.
The Green George, Claret George and Detached Daddy were good, these are great teaser flies and were excellent as top droppers. The Muddlers worked well on the lake, these flies push through the water creating a bubble which attracts the feeding trout. Other ‘pusher flies’ used to create a disturbance and used again on the top dropper were the Bibios, Zulus and Sedgehogs. Something sleeker and more imitative on the middle like the Claret & Mallard, Silver Invicta and Wickham’s Fancy and then a flashy attractor on the point like a Dunkeld, Peter Ross or Alexandra. The Bibio is a very versatile fly as it can work both as a top dropper attractor and a tweaked dry, when greased.

It is next to impossible to make a definitive statement as to what will work or how to fish on any particular day on Lough Sheelin but it is necessary to cover all what is happening out there and most of what is being used but still writing about this vast array of insect life and choices and the corresponding imitations can’t help but remind me of my elderly neighbour of many years ago who always greeted me religiously each morning with his weather prediction with the words ‘It will be a whole wet day or it won’t rain a drop’ and then as I returned in the evening, he’d waylay me with ‘What did I tell you’ and so I feel like him, that I’ve covered all the options so whatever way the dice falls I’m going to be right. It can’t be helped, for August is a rich month, rich in fly life and rich in trout rising and so I reassure myself that I’m not becoming like my old friend with a quote from Galileo who said ‘we cannot teach people anything, we can only help them discover it within themselves’ and Sheelin in all its unpredictable beauty is undoubtedly out there waiting to be discovered by its anglers.

A look around Sheelin

Brenda Montgomery IFI