So, that’s pretty much it for the season for brown trout, sea trout and salmon fly anglers. Currane, Sheelin and a few other lakes are still open until October 12th but for the vast majority of you the rods are being put away for the winter.
Over the coming weeks Tom & Daire will be reviewing how the season went on the rivers and loughs around Ireland for salmon and brown trout so stay tuned for those episodes…
But this week they catch up with a salmon angler who moved over from England just three years ago and discovered salmon fishing that he is in thrall to. You might have seen some of George Kavanagh’s incredible images from the Suir on Instagram and it was no surprise to learn that George is a commercial photographer who has worked all around the world on shoots.
Salmon fishing is his other passion though and the recent move to Ireland opened his eyes to the salmon fishing that was on his doorstep. Sometimes it takes someone to come in from elsewhere to maybe make us appreciate what we actually have here……
Fishing journalist Rudy van Duijnhoven was on the road in southern Ireland with his fishing buddy Theo van de Poll for the last week of September. Here is his report:
‘The first stop was Greg and Sigi Latour’s Tir na Spideoga Fishing Lodge in Inchigeelagh, County Cork. For two days, Greg Latour guided us on Lough Allua, fishing a large number of promising spots with pike streamers. The north wind meant that the pike were hardly active, and the catch – despite the hard work – was limited to some small pike.
Lough Allua, Cork
We then moved to Cobh, and switched our target to seabass. Richie Ryan of Cork Bass took us out on the water for a day in Cork Harbour. The strong north-west wind made fly-fishing anything but easy, there were big waves with foam heads in the harbour and the drifting of the boat was faster than desirable. After trying for seabass at a few locations, Richie sailed to the mouth of the harbour to try for pollock. Pollock again proved to be a fish you could rely on and with fast-sinking fly lines and small Clouser Minnows, several nice pollock could be landed.
Richie Ryan into a pollack from his boatTheo with a nice pollack on the fly
Later that day, we tried some fly fishing from the shore for bass in and around the Cobh area, fishing a few different spots at different stages in the tide. After a lot of casting, suddenly, the fish became active, and we managed to get a few bass on surface flies, which was great fun.
We moved to Youghal the following day, and despite the strong north westerly winds, which made casting difficult, we managed to have the best session of the week. After landing a number of bass in the 40-50cm bracket on white/beige streamer patterns, we started to get some bigger fish, including a couple of 60cm fish, which were super fish to get on a fly rod. But even those fish were made to look small by a really good 70cm+ fish, which came to a white streamer about 10cm in length. In addition to seabass, we also managed to land mackerel and a garfish on the fly.
A white streamer did the trick
Before making the return trip to Dublin, we fished the same spot for a few hours the next morning. Due to changing conditions, with a weak south-westerly wind now, there was a much stronger tidal current. The catch this morning was limited to some small seabass up to 40 centimetres in length. Nevertheless, Theo and Rudy returned home very satisfied and are already looking forward to their next fishing trip to Ireland.’
Some fantastic fish lately for club members out and about including a few more Irish specimen length fish got.
Proinnsias Doherty had a specimen length small eyed (painted) ray at 84cm which is the 4th specimen painted ray for club members in the last few weeks after John Cunningham, Ryan McGinley and Shane Cunningham also had specimen length fish of over 80cm. Proinnsias also had fun with large conger eels at the pier testing the gear to the limit.
Specimen painted ray for Proinnsias and joint club recordProinnsias feels the power of the conger
Ryan McGinley had a fine flounder of 41cm…always nice to break the 40cm mark with a flounder.
41cm flounder for Ryan
John Higgins had a specimen length cuckoo wrasse on the boat and joint club record with Daragh McGuinness who also had his specimen cuckoo of 36cm recently.
Specimen cuckoo for John Higgins
Yet more specimen fish landed during the week with another club record equalling 83cm small eyed ray for John Cunningham which is his 2nd specimen small eyed this year along with specimens for Shane Cunningham, Ryan McGinley and Proinnsias Doherty.
Joint club record specimen small eyed ray 83cm for John Cunningham
Also flounders to 39cm for John, bass, small eyed ray and trout doubles for Proinnsias along with a day at the wrasse for Cormac.
Last Friday our third league outing took place on the stunning Mullaghderg Beach…West Donegal fishing under a starry Rosses sky!
Stunning night in the Rosses
Proper Autumn surf conditions with a pull to one side but luckily little to no weed making for an enjoyable night’s fishing for the 21 anglers with fish straight away all along the beach feeding before the ebb tide when it died off.
A great start for Daragh McGuinness with 7 counting flounder and a turbot of 30cm shooting 274pts winning well for €122.
2nd place with 4 flounder and a turbot with 157pts was Cara Boyle winning €61
Longest flattie outside of the top 2 places was a shared 33cm each flounder for Ryan McGinley and Bren Green splitting €61.
Lucky peg drawn from the hat at the round up was won by Sean Harte €42.
Some great fishing over our Indian summer well done all!
What a tough day at the office today, the weather was a little worse than forecast was given, but fair play to the lads that put in a tough few hours. However, we got rewarded with a beauty, a nice 530lbs tuna to the boat. This fish stripped a lot of line on the first run, so we knew we had a battle on our hands, but the man in the chair fought him brilliantly in the big swell to get the fish to the boat in good time and condition. Well done lads!
500lbs plus bluefin
A couple days later we went after tuna again. But what started off as a very promising day, did not end up that way. However, we did have success in getting one small fish of 180lbs at the start of the day. We had no luck then until the tide turned. Soon after we hooked up into a good fish this time, and after a 20 minute fight with about 5mt to go, the fish got a little bit of slack and managed to throw the hook, which is heart breaking…didn’t see much after that. Still an enjoyable day out on the water.
Playing a Donegal Bay bluefin tuna aboard Fiona Tee
The second match of the IASCaire 2024 Autumn League took anglers to the one and only Lough Brackley in Cavan. The competitors gathered their trolleys, shock leaders and few boxes of hook lengths in preparation of the mighty Brackley ledge and its appetite for terminal tackle.
Fishing was tough, as expected the bigger fish just didn’t want to play ball. However, a some of the club members still managed to creep in a few bonuses to build up some decent average weights across the bank.
Roman Kwasniewski took First Place on his home turf with 47 fish, including a few nice bonuses, to make 7.940kg. Dykun Pavlo took Second place with a decent bag of 33 small hybrids and roach to weigh in 6.390kg. Sarunas Zenkovas Took Third Place with a bag of 51 small roach and a little bonus to weigh in 5.160kg.
Ireland’s Masters and Under 25 Feeder Fishing teams are in Szeged in Hungary this week where they are competing at the World Championships in those categories.
These are exciting times for the Under 25’s, as they attend the very first world championship for young feeder anglers on the renowned rowing course. Team Ireland members are; John Browne, Brian Clark, Charlie Richards and Dominykas Kuklys.
Its the 3rd edition for the Masters (over 55’s) and representing Team Ireland are; Vincent Walsh, Karl Woodhouse, Jack Tisdall, Sean Murray and Colin Martin.
Irish teams warming up in Hungary
1 of 10
Today the teams are completing the fourth of the four days of training ahead of the competition which takes place on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th October. Good luck to both teams.
Last week water levels remain low on the Laune. There were just 2 fish reported. One was caught on Beat 3 by an angler who was spinning. the fish weighed 7lbs. Another fish was also caught spinning on Johnson’s Fishery, weighing 8lbs.
Fishing was very quiet for the last week of the season and water levels remained low. There was a flood following the rain on Sunday but it was too late to make much difference to fishing which has been tough all season.
Best of luck to Team Ireland Predator members Tomek Kurman, Jacek Gorny, Daniel Nesbitt, Aidan O’Connor and Krzysztof Sibiga who will be fishing 15th edition of the FIPS-ed World Championships Predator Boat Angling with Lures. This event is proudly hosted by the National Coarse Fishing Federation of Ireland (NCFFI) on Upper Lough Erne in County Fermanagh over the next three days.
The Upper Lough Erne was the venue chosen by the NCFFI, who are honoured to be hosting the competition for the World Freshwater Angling body FIPSed Fédération Internationale de la Pêche Sportive en Eau Douce. The destination for the championships is the Share Discovery Village just outside the town of Lisnaskea in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland and several of the teams arrived a week ahead of the championships for familiarisation with the magnificent angling Lough Erne offers to predator seekers.
The championship programme included two days official training ahead of the three day competition, taking place from today, Thursday 3rd, until Saturday, 5th of October. The cream of the worlds lure anglers will represent 15 nations coming from across the globe:
Teams will consist of 4 anglers from each nation fishing in pairs for pike and perch from boats using only artificial lures.
Some nicer day in the morning. The wind did come up later. You’ll always remember the morning though
Jim Clohessy of TopFisher.eu was making the most of Saturday ahead of the current unsettled conditions…
Saturday’s run was the last run for September. I think at this time of year you must consider any opportunity as being the potentially last run of the year… it’s happened before!
I was flying solo yesterday with all my usual victims unavailable (Or dodging me! ). I had two plans in prep. If the forecasted drop in wind didn’t happen I’d run to plan B. As it happened all worked out OK and plan A was go. A run offshore on wrecks and maybe some scratching around for haddock, whiting etc.
Roches Point outbound. Mackerel were scarce. Just when the harbour was teeming with small mackerel in recent weeks.
It was a cracking morning. I have always heard fishermen say that northerlies push the mackerel off. It seem to be the case as I was working hard for mackerel in the usual harbour spots. I had only a few stragglers. I pushed off a bit and had some mackerel of the smaller variety. They’d do fine.
Steamed offshore in perfect conditions. You could see from the offset that there was a lot of life about. Lots of dolphins and a huge amount of bird life. My first detour off the GOTO was to inspect a huge conglomeration of birds. I was just late to the party. As I arrived a few BFT showed among the dolphins but were there and gone. The water had a slick on top and was full of silvery scales… As I say I missed the party. There was a large show on the sounder toward bottom and a quick drop showed these to be big scad. I kept a couple for bait (I usually wouldn’t).
Some fine ling. All on mackerel bait on single paternoster wrecking rig.
First stop was a wreck that I am beginning to know well. I like to drift the edges here but the combination of wind and tide made that well nigh impossible. I was picking up a few handy ling so I baited up a big-boy trace and sent it down with a big-boy bait. I had a steady stream of good ling topping out at around18lbs. Fine fish.
Great scrap from this one. Thought I’d lost him in the wreck as the first run was very strong. Usual rig and bait.
Eventually I moved off the wreck. There was no point in filling the cooler. I’d have to fillet them on return. As it was I had a fair amount of fish on board. I drifted further afield but the mixed fishing was very slow. On the way back in I passed a seiner, a local 22m boat that you wouldn’t expect to be fishing this close in. Good chance it was after doing “my patch” too.
As the wind built from the SE it was time to head for the slipway. As usual I had a drift too many making my spin home more bouncy than I hoped… typical. Last cast syndrome is strong with this one.
Some nicer day in the morning. The wind did come up later. You’ll always remember the morning though
The worst part of the spin was closer to the harbour, a building wind and an ebb tide.
A handy enough retrieve and sort the boat for road and then I had to fillet the catch. The evenings are really closing in.
My pictures were taken from the phone in a cradle and using the camera remote – you get 3 seconds to compose! I’ll have to work on that.
The evenings are shot really. This was taken at 1900
