Tuesday 27th March I arrived at 07.43, a full eight minutes ahead of schedule and made my first river inspection. I really didn’t like what I saw. The level is very low. As a reference point, I use the concrete by the bridge as a marker and it is a full one foot down. When I was over at the beginning of February, there was at least two and a half foot of extra water and I could never imagine it would drop so much, so quickly.
I usually do a session within the first couple hours after my arrival, but fatigue and lack of enthusiasm caused me to postpone wetting a line until just after 5pm. The nice weather had brought a few casual anglers out and some smallish Roach were their reward. I had 20 minutes on the gusher with 4 spratt sized Roach before a move to the bridge as the sun created some shade into the swim. I caught 7 fish with the best about 6 oz. For some mad reason I walked across the bridge to try the navigation channel. Normally, this would unfishable in March, but with levels close to what I’d expect in May, float presentation was easy. 1 Perch of 2 oz was caught before having the final 20 minutes of daylight above the bridge on the Longford side. It was here that I netted my first bigger fish of my spring campaign with a Roach of around 14 oz. Three more 2-3 oz fish followed and then it was time to quit. I’ve had far worse first days, but the amount of weed showing is going to make fishing very difficult at Lanesborough this year.

Saturday March 31st I’ve just returned from doing a session normally reserved for May evenings. With the number of Tincas showing, Steven Keough and myself had to have a piece of the action and fortunately we both netted the rare commodity that is a March Tench. Mine was a male of 2 lb 13 oz whilst Stevens was a female of 3 lb. he also lost two at the net, and I had the consolation of two Perch.
Earlier in the day, Steve and Josh Blacklidge from Chorely shared a good mixed bag above Ryans gate and there were a lot of casual anglers coming and going all day. I’m sure the water temperature has hit the magic 51f because the navigation channel was alive at dusk. I really must get the thermometer out tomorrow.

Sunday April 1st Today will go down as one of those “special” days. Some early birds arrived long before dawn which paid dividends. Larry Kelly from Athboy had a Bream estimated at around 5 lbs along with some Hybrids on the gusher. Above the bush was Chris Ganley from Ballyhaunis who recorded the best bag of the season so far with 80 lbs. of Bream, Hybrids and Roach. All fell to a feeder in a little over 5 hours. His best Bream was a specimen of 7 lb 8 oz with an added bonus of two Roach both going 1 lb 13 oz.
Somewhat under the radar was Steven Keogh who caught 16 Tench to 5 lb 7 oz despite packing up a little after 10 am.   At 5 pm I closed the shop and was lured into joining him for another session. Between four of us we netted 14 bringing the seasons Tinca Tally to 45!  My contribution was three fish of 4 lb 4 oz, 4 lb 6 oz and a baby of 3 lbs. There was a lot of surface activity again at dusk, so I am expecting a bumper week ahead of us
Was my report an April Fools Joke? Would I lie to you?
Paul Waghorne at www.lanesboroughangling.ie

Leigh Maitland had another very good day on Fri 30th March in Lanesborough…

He set off early on Friday morning so he could be ready to fish at first light and hoped to hear a bit of surface activity from the larger fish in low light to see if they had moved in yet, as recent reports hadn’t been very positive.
He only heard maybe 3-4 fish topping which got him thinking, so he opted to fish the pole over the feeder as it gave him a few different bait presentation options to tempt the few wary fish that seemed to be there.  He chose to fish at 11m simply because its comfortable and Leigh knows from previous experience its easy to get the fish this close if you feed correctly.

He kept things very simple and set up only 2 rigs, one was a 4 g flat float for pinning the bait to the bottom set about 30 cm over depth and the other was a 1.5 g bubble for running through at a slightly slower pace than the current set slightly off bottom, each of these was set up on 0.16 mm Browning Hybrid Mono main line and 0.14 mm Browning Cenex line for hook length, both rigs had size 14 hooks to start off with and later upped to a 12 (serie18).

Bait for the day consisted of, 4 pints of Hemp, 2 pints of Maggots, 1 pint of Pinkies, 1 tin of Sweetcorn and approximately 7 kg of ground bait ( 50% Brown Crumb, 25% VDE Gold Pro 25% VDE Secret).  Leigh normally would have a few pints of casters in the mix but due to the great weather he had sold out.

Once ready he made only 5 Orange sized hard balls of ground bait laced with a handful each of Pinkie and Hemp, he cupped these in at 11m as he was still a little on the cautious side due to the little activity mentioned earlier, after 5 run throughs and 4 Roach to 6oz,  Leigh felt he could start to up the feed a little so for every second fish he introduced a golf ball sized nugget of ground bait, this then started to produce roach to 1 lb 8 oz with an average fish of 8-10 oz every run through, after a few hours he started to lose some very big fish so switched to the flat float with sweetcorn as a hook bait, straight away he bagged my first Tench of about 3 lb 8 oz followed by some decent bream to 3 lbs. when this method slowed down Leigh just switch back, get some feed in, attracting the roach then the bigger fish would follow.

It is very easy to go to Lanesborough and fish a feeder for the bigger fish but for a busy day and to test your self try the pole, big fish in running water and a light elastic is great fun !!

Leigh Maitland (Browning)

Coarseandmatch.com