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85cm bass for Keith Barker in Waterford

85 cm bass Keith Barker
A happy Keith with his 85cm sea bass

Keith Barker is no stranger to big bass but at the weekend he he surprised even himself by beating his PB by 5cm…

I would like to report my fish caught at the weekend from a shingle beach in Co. Waterford, taken on light lure gear, on a neap tide on the 6th of October

85 cm bass keith barker

The fish was a 85cm European sea  bass Improving my personal best by 5 cm.

The gear I used was aMajorcraft triple cross 10-30gr eu custom 902m paired with a Penn slammer 2500DX reel

A small neap tide flooding with 2 hours to high water, hooked in shallow water in the shore break, hooked with a belly weighted EVOBASS sabre 130 in white soft plastic.

Go fishing…

Bass fishing in Ireland

Sea angling along the south east coast

 

Stunning new marine maps from Infomar

Sea anglers will be particularly interested in the new series of marine maps that Infomar have been releasing recently. And not just sea anglers, indeed anyone with an interest in geography, maps, the marine etc. Because these maps are truly stunning and beautiful creations that bring oceanography and art together, and would look great on any wall.

Infomar (Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource) is a 20-year, DECC-funded joint programme between the Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute, surveying our unmapped marine territory and creating a range of integrated mapping products of the physical, chemical and biological features of the seabed.

Now Infomar are releasing a new series of marine coastal maps, the Bluescale series, that are not just beautiful to look at, but also very detailed and informative about our coastal topography. We spotted them on the Infomar Twitter (@followtheboats), where they announced that one new map will be released every week – teasing us! 9 weeks later, the library is looking better and better…

While these sample pics may look great, the full-resolution maps are amazingly detailed, and what’s more absolutely FREE! They can be downloaded from the Infomar gallery here. The large jpeg files are perfect for printing and framing, and would look great on any wall. Some of them will certainly be going up on ours!

Irish Angling Update 🎣 06 October 2023

September started with a heatwave and it ended with a storm. October is going the early heatwave route too, but not without getting more than a bit of rain and wind out of its system first. So, while we can look forward to some decent fishing over the weekend, in this Update, we’re looking back on what was a tough week for anglers…

delphi
Closing day salmon on Delphi

There were a few fish about on Currane as the salmon season drew to a close, and the Inny produced a few takers too, but overall weather conditions weren’t great. It was a similar tale from fisheries like the Laune, Erriff and elsewhere which makes 23 fish on closing day at Delphi and 125 for the week on the Moy seem pretty special.

corrib
September was dogged by poor weather but ferox anglers had good sport on Corrib through 2023

Trout anglers found the Nore, like a number of other rivers, in flood as the season closed. And so quite a few started their stockie fishing a little earlier than usual. Those on the lakes like Corrib, Conn, Cullin and O’Flynn did little better as the weather made for unsafe conditions for much of the week. Hopefully there’ll be some decent fishing before 12 October on Sheelin, Owel, Ennell, Derravaragh, Lene and the other fisheries that remain open for the next 6 days.

Very little to report on the coarse front, but the report we have makes good reading. Johhny Keith had 18kg on the whip in a competition on the Newry Canal, plenty of encouragement for any coarse angler thinking of hitting their local water for a chuck at the weekend.

Lough Derg pike

It was much the same for pike anglers. Fishing Belturbet at the weekend, Ger Power endured miserable conditions on Saturday and bright sunshine on Sunday, but still managed a PB of 22lb. Down on Lough Derg the going was tough and windows of opportunity short, but the pike were feeding and some lovely fish were landed.

perch

The perch were biting too and anglers Paul Bourke and Senan Stanley had good numbers of fish and some beauties heading for 40cm. On the podcast front, Ireland on the Fly talks Pike on the Fly with specialist guide Stuart Wylie.

bass

To the sea and its shores now. Bass Guide Richie Ryan, in Cobh, gives a run down of his season and, again, September was not a great month, but he holds out hope for October which is a great month for bass, and gives fly anglers something else to target with the close of the game fisheries. Staying in Cobh, the 2023 EFSA Boat & Line Class Championships was fished in Cork Harbour in September. Visiting anglers did well with German, Marcus Wuest, Norwegian, Petter Skudal and French man Francis Couzinet taking the top 3 spots in the line class competition. The team event was won by Ireland with France second and  Norway third. You can read the full report here: EFSA Boat & Line Class Championships 2023 – Cobh, Co. Cork Ireland

Monatrae
A foggy day at Monatrae

Shore angling reports came in from Monatrae just over the border from east Cork and back in Broadstrand in West Cork. Anglers at both venues endured poor conditions but the fishing in Monatrae was decidedly better on the night. Still onshore, but this time in Belmullet, anglers reported some good fishing over 4 days at a variety of venues. Highlights were conger to 20lb and good pollack fishing. Not too far away Newport SAC fished their final competition of the season on Clew Bay. The anglers had a great day out with the local charter boats on one of the rare calm days September had on offer.

ifsa
Sally Gilvarry accepting the Maurice Dalton Cup

In other competition news, the All-Ireland Open Shore competition for the Jimmy Smith and Maurice Dalton Cups was held on Benone beach, Co. Derry. 104 anglers took to the beach on Benone in what was the most keenly contested all-Ireland in many years. The wild weather did the beach no end of good and everyone was catching in the first few casts. Juniors, Seniors, Ladies and Club events were held, and you can read the full report here: Jimmy Smith/Maurice Dalton Cup Results.

Irish Specimen Fish Atlas

irish specimen fish atlasThe Irish Specimen Fish Committee has just published a new book documenting and analysing specimen fish catches in Ireland from 1955 to 2019.

It promises to make an interesting read for any angler interested in learning about specimen fish and how catches of specimen fish have evolved over time.

Find out more about the Irish Specimen Fish Atlas and how to buy your copy at:

Irish Specimen Fish Committee Fish Atlas Published

And now the weather

A warm and generally dry weekend and start to next week with temperatures a few degrees above the norm. Temperatures at night are unlikely to drop below 16C and during the day they’ll rise as high as 24C. Exceptional for October! There may be some foggy mornings but the worst should clear by early afternoon. Not much to expect on the wind front, just light south to south west breezes. Rain again on Tuesday, but temperatures still up around 20C. Sounds like a good weekend to be on the water…

Safe fishing to all and tight lines, especially here in Ireland.

IFI Staff
Catch, Photo, Release

If you have an angling story to share with the Irish Angling Update please send it to [email protected].

All the angling news

Salmon Fishing Reports

Trout Fishing Reports

Coarse Angling Reports

Pike Fishing Reports

Sea Angling Reports

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Challenging season on the Moy comes to a close

Steve Schreck reports from the River Moy…

Angling Report week ending 01/10/23

As the days are getting shorter and the salmon fishing season has now come to an end, let us reflect on and reminisce about the bygone season for a moment.

It can’t be denied that 2023 was a bit of a peculiar year.

As always, anglers being eternal optimists, every single one of us rejoiced in the beginning of a new season and the opportunity to partake in one of the most beautiful and fulfilling pastimes. Cold days in blistering wind become insignificant with a single purpose, one lingering thought in the back of your mind: ‘This could be the day when I hook one of those majestic silver spring salmon, a fish of a lifetime. Any second now’, as you patiently cast, wait and anticipate.

As the season progresses and nature around us has become fully alive and everything seems to be plentiful, on a mild summer evening, you’re eagerly awaiting the grilse run to begin. ‘Ah, c’mon, just for a couple of hours’, one might think. ‘I’m certainly going to meet a fish or maybe even two’.

This season, as so many others before it, had its glorious, almost magical moments for many an angler, but it also had a dark side of unmet expectations and frustration for many others.

I’d like to encourage all you anglers out there, young and old, not to lose hope or let go of our shared passion. The sun will shine again. It sometimes just takes a bit of tenacity to steer through the stormy weather ahead.

Tight lines for 2024 from the Moy Fishery Team. We’ll hopefully see you out there.

Ballina Salmon Anglers reported 30 salmon for the week.

Mount Falcon recorded 7 fish, 2 of which were released. The best fish weighed 5lbs.

Knockmore Salmon Anglers reported 8 salmon on spinner and worm, 4 of which were released.

Byrne’s Fishery recorded 2 salmon for the week.

Gannon’s Fishery reported 6 salmon, of which two were fresh fish. The biggest salmon weighed 8lbs.

The Foxford Fishery recorded 25 fish mainly caught on spinner, 21 of which were released. The best fish weighed 12lbs.

Foxford Salmon Anglers reported 34 salmon for the week, of which 27 were caught at Rinnaney and 7 at Baker’s.

Cloongee Fishery recorded 5 salmon, 1 of which was released. All of those fish were caught spinning. The best fish weighed 9lbs.

East Mayo Anglers reported 8 salmon for the week, 2 of which were released. All fish were caught on the spinner. Two fish were double figure salmon, weighing 10lbs and 12lbs respectively.

A total of 125 salmon were reported caught throughout the Moy catchment during the week.

Mixed season on Loughs Conn & Cullin

Steve Schreck reports from Loughs Conn & Cullin…

Angling Report week ending 01/10/23

A mixed season on Loughs Conn and Cullin has come to an end. The weather, more often than not, wasn’t in favour of the angling community and therefore angling pressure was much lower than would normally be the case. The persistent anglers, however, still enjoyed good sport and caught nice trout, which should be an encouragement for the anglers who didn’t venture out. Don’t miss out next season.

Castlebar Anglers Association were intending to re-run the ‘Jackson Cup’ on Lough Conn on Saturday 30th September, but the weather thwarted those intentions once again.

Foxford Angling Club re-fished their ‘Chris Downey Cup’ on Saturday 30th September.

1st place went to Brian Kennedy with one trout to measure.

Dominic McGowan boated 9 fish during the competition, but unfortunately none was above the limit of 13 inches.

Peter Roche fished Brackwansha, Victoria and Massbrook on Friday, catching 2 fish at Brackwansha on a Fiery Brown Dabbler.

Mixed bag so far this season for Richie Ryan, but it’s not over yet…!

bass

The Eire Bass guide guide Richie Ryan sent us short a report on his season so far this year. The guide takes up the story: 

   “ My season as a guide in 2023 was a mixed bag. Clients looking for saltwater fly fishing were scarce enough but most who booked had a pleasant surprise at the numbers and quality of fish. July was one of the poorest months weather-wise that I can ever remember. We believe the bass went on the crab in August and were difficult to target. Pollack on the fly was excellent throughout the season as always. Again a great help here is the absence of gill nets due to seal predation. September brought the bass back feeding hard, but the amount of fresh water in Cork Harbour at the end of September really did us no favours. 

Tyler John Fitzgerald from Canada with a cracker of a pollack

   To those fishermen/women annoyed at the end of the game season, I can extend your angling experience for you. October can be an excellent month for bass, so why not try a cast on the deep blue for a change? You can put the awful salmon season behind you and actually catch fish. What have you got to lose, a bass maybe !

Go Fishing

If you want to book Richie then go to  www.corkbass.com

Eire Bass – Richie Ryan

Saltwater fly fishing Guide.

Web: www.corkbass.com E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: +353 (0)86 1940744

Quiet close to the salmon season on the Laune

Crisp Autumnal Morning on the Laune. 21st September. There is water in the Laune but not a lot.
Crisp Autumnal Morning on the Laune. 21st September. There is water in the Laune but not a lot.

There was 1 salmon on Beat 2 of the river Laune caught spinning by a visiting angler, water levels high in the last week.

Prior to this angling on the Laune was slack for the best part with big floods and abysmal weather being the main culprits.  When it did clear some grilse were met and landed in the lower sections of the River Laune.

Trout fishing is open on the Laune to 12 October https://permits.fishinginireland.info/product/beats-1-2-muckross-fishery-trout-permit/

Go fishing…

Rivers Laune and Killarney Lakes system

2023 A Good Season for Ferox Trout on Lough Corrib

Predator guide Tomi Kurman, an expert on fishing for ferox trout, gives us his rundown on the 2023 ferox season on Corrib.

2023 Trout Season in Ireland is now closed.
Time for a little summary….
Unfortunately this year I didn’t made my goal of landing 100 Ferox over 65cm in a season.
I would easily do it, but almost whole September was out of the cards. Few days at the start of the month resulted in some nice fish landed, then I took 2 weeks break from guiding to practice and take a part in the biggest tournament of the year. On top of that last week of the Season was a complete write off, with not even one day suitable to target those beautiful beasts….
Two years ago I ended up Season with 122 Ferox, last year 102, and this year “only” 94 .
I know 94 is still outstanding number, but if you set up your goal yourself it’s nice to actually achieve that… none the least I have no reasons to complain… some of my regular guests caught beautiful trout and some new faces smashed their records with me.
Highlight of the Season is definitely a day with 8(!) Ferox landed and three of them caught and landed at the same time!
Triplet of 78,78and 79cm were my first ever (only known to me too!!!) triple hook up. It’s a lottery win on its own, but 3 fish at this size is something else!
The biggest fish of the Season was caught by Guest from Germany- a true beast of 89.5cm (I know- not a Holly Grail of 90cm and just over 20lb in weight.
This trout season again didn’t see us much at brown trout fishing, but when we did it was outstanding with many beautiful trout caught casting and by light trolling from the hand…
Off to statistics now:
In total we have landed 94 Ferox over 65cm.
We have spend 49 days targeting Ferox, of which 8 days ended up with no fish caught (or fish smaller then 65cm were caught) which is a BLANK in my books. That gives avarage of 2.3 Ferox per day when we caught Ferox or 1.9 Ferox per day including blanks.
Off to next year now, and I can’t wait already. It will be fantastic I can promise you that!
Now enjoy a collection of some notable catches of this Season and if you want to be included in Next Seson COUNT just send me a message. Bookings for next season are open for all Season, but arround half Spring dates are gone already so be quick! Please note that ALL bookings for NEXT Season are subject to deposit payment and please inquire about new pricing and service terms. My service might be not too cheap, but as some say it’s well underpriced considering whats on offer!!! So get the calendar and think about Next Season! Also please inquire about my “catch guarantee” policy- I like a bit of a gamble too
Guides’ day out!

 

Go Fishing

Tomi Guided Fishing
To book a trip with Tomi Kurman, give him a call on 085 7318541 or check out his Facebook page here: Tomi Guidedfishing

Pike on the Fly with Stuart Wylie

Pike on the Fly with Stuart Wylie

For those of you forced to hang up the trout and salmon rods, you may be thinking of some pike on the fly action to keep you from the DTs and so for this week’s episode of Ireland on the Fly, Daire and Tom speak to pike on the fly guide, Stuart Wylie, to find out more and to help get you started as we head into the winter period.

Listen and follow on Apple or Spotify:

https://pod.fo/e/1f4de8

Another year drifts by at Delphi

Fishery manager David McEvoy updated us on the 2023 season this week. A good read as always from David. Read on…

Another Year Drifts By

It’s hard to believe that we’ve reached the end of another fishing season here at Delphi. In some ways the 1st of February seems like yesterday and in others it seems like aeons ago. We’ll all have plenty of tidying up to do on fishing gear and that, in the next week or so and before we know it, we’ll be dusting off the rods again in the hope of that elusive Springer.

It’s been just over a month since my last update and we were relatively quiet for the first two weeks of the month and we even managed to get 7 days in a row without any rain at all, the net result being that the river dropped to 1 on the Gauge for the first time since the 18th of June. It wasn’t ideal for salmon fishing as it often becomes increasingly frustrating, especially when one can easily see the fish. On Thursday the 7th the temperature actually reached 27.1 degrees at our automatic weather station at Doolough. As an aside if ever any of you are pining for Delphi weather, all you have to do is google wow.met.ie and you’ll basically get a map of Ireland, and you just enlarge the map and tap on Doolough and it gives you the weather data for the day since midnight. It updates every 30 minutes. As a result of this beautiful spell fishing was not terribly high on the agenda.

Many tried but salmon were playing hard to get, with sea trout being a lot more co-operative. We are often blessed with the customers we have, in that luckily “catching” is not the be all and end all. During the fine spell we had a wonderful group from the City Flickers club in London. This is basically a club set up by Lucy Mantle of young (20’s and 30’s) up and coming anglers who generally work in London, and when most of your customer base is now my age and older these are like a breath of fresh air and hopefully, they will all continue their piscatorial passion, well into the future.

Rainfall amounted to 271.8mms (10.7”). Our weather became more Autumnal from mid-September on and, as a result the salmon became a little more active. First of the month was landed by Constancio Merchante from Spain on the 16th. The fish was his first ever, weighing 4lbs15ozs from the Grilse Pool on a very lightly tied Willie Ginn single. Finlough is stuffed with fish, but they were very difficult to tempt. We had serious rainfall amounting to 113.8mms (4.48”) between the 23rd, 24th and 25th and the Gauge went to 110 on the afternoon of the 24th. Sean Kelly from the US had two that day, one from the Turn Pool of 4lbs14ozs and the second from the Middle River of approx. 5lbs. He had another the following day, again from the Middle River of 3lbs2ozs, all on a Delphi Collie. John Phelan also had one on the 25th from the Quarry of approx. 7lbs on a Willie Gunn. Richard Tattersall landed one on the 26th from the Goat of approx. 4lbs on a Delphi Collie. The dynamic duo of Liam Dunne and Paul Smyth had a fish each off Fin on the 28th of 6lbs3ozs and 4lbs1oz respectively on an Excutioner and Delphi Collie. The 30th finished up as usual with an open day and fish were more inclined to take, especially since many of the items being presented were unique to them! Total landed for the day was 23, with Eoin and Rory Smith, Vadim Baclanov and Svetoslav Nino all managing to land their first ever. Bradan Boland had the best of the day of approx. 14lbs. That brought our total for the month to 31 and for the season to 260. Having said that, I believe that there are definitely more fish in the system this year and Finlough in particular. Sea trout provided some good sport for those who targeted them, with 91 for the month and 261 in total for the year.

Thank You

Finally, I must thank all who helped and supported us throughout the year. Good customers make our job so much easier and often reminds us why we do what we do. Thank you all! D.McEvoy

 

Go fishing…

At Delphi Lodge, with many years of experience with the timing of the best runs of fish, we have in place a price system that offers both great value fishing and lets our anglers know when they have the best chance to catch a fresh run spring salmon or a summer grilse or Delphi sea trout.

Delphi Fishery
Delphi Lodge, Leenane, Co. Galway.
Tel: +353 (0)95-42222 Fax +353-95-42296
Web: www.delphilodge.ie