Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

Water temperatures have gradually climbed during the past two weeks as daytime heats peaked at 24°C. For Lough Sheelin, water temperatures are now registering 19.72°C at 0.5 metres and 17.99°C at 12.5 metres. The blusterier days produced a better stratification but in general it has been warm from top to bottom.

Brown trout are the hardier of the trout family.  The optimal feeding and movement water temperature for them is 10°C to 15°C. Like many other fish species, trout are cold-water fish, and they become less active when the water gets too hot. Due to the high oxygen needs, trout search for colder waters during the summer season because the amount of oxygen in the water reduces the warmer things gets. Higher temperatures mean that the trout are more lethargic and it’s difficult for them to breathe.  This translates to moving less to save energy and not eating as often or as much.

Hitting 19°C plus, the goal of our trout is to move to areas of colder water or thermal refuge, so it is down to the bottom and holding out under those rocks and weeded areas.

When the water temperature reaches 20°C or goes even higher, the oxygen level drops significantly, and the trout get stressed and they will stop feeding until the water cools down again. Trout caught in water temps above 20°C can and will often die even if you think that you released them healthy.

All of the above doesn’t bode well for the trout angler and successes diminished significantly as this hot spell continued.

The Whit weekend  marked the start of this heat wave and with the persistent and rising temperatures the Sheelin trout have headed South for deeper water, gluing themselves to the bottom until the evening cool brought falls of spent and hatches of sedges and with it the necessary piscatorial encouragement to chance surface feeding.

Although the hot weather took its toll on the daytime fishing, the evening and dusk more than made up for things as Sheelin treated its anglers to spectacular dances of millions of mayfly bobbing up and down above shoreline trees and bushes and above islands in their almost theatrical mating dance.  Although our mayfly season is more or less over for this year, there are still pods of hatches to be found.  Lough Sheelin, above any other trout lake in Ireland appears to have hosted the largest numbers of this special almost magical little insect.  In their silent way, mayflies speak volumes about water quality.  Known as an indicator species, their presence and abundance serve as evidence of healthy water as they have little tolerance for poor water quality.  Lough Sheelin historically has battled a nutrient overload and although always on a knife edge, it has to be a very encouraging and uplifting thing to witness so many of these wonderful, almost spiritual little flies, take to the air.  It is as if nature is fighting back against the damage that humans have done to this wild brown trout fishery.

Day time fishing has more or less ground to a halt with an odd trout being caught on nymph set ups – mayfly, Diawl Bach, CDC, Montana Nymph, Buzzer and Spiders.  Dry and wet fishing was poor and it was the nymphs that worked best during the day.

Anglers here continually prefer the exhilaration of sight fishing regardless of the fact that there is a great reason to start nymphing as 90% of the fish eat nymphs 90% of the time.

Easterly winds predominated throughout the two weeks. This direction is generally not favoured by anglers but with the heat it didn’t much matter.

Lough Sheelin’s trout fishing has moved nocturnal as trout are now rising to sedges after 10pm.  The fish are only surfacing to feed at sunset and after dark, with trout taking small dry sedge patterns and Wulffs.

Although fish are being caught and angling numbers remain in the double figures after office hours, fishing has become more challenging with trout becoming picky and difficult.  Spent numbers were huge but it was only the smaller male patterns that were working or the pattern that had a bushier or shaggy muddler kind of head.. It seems to be the scruffier tyings that are getting the trout’s attention.

The best areas for fishing (wind dependant) were the back of Church Island, Corru, Derrysheridan, Bog Bay,  Inchacup, Stoney Island, Chambers, Lynch’s pt and Plunketts point.

The flies that worked reasonably well over the past two weeks were the spent gnat patterns and for the past seven days most of the catches were in the late afternoon up to and beyond 11pm.

 Another good working combination was a size 14 Klinkhammer as the point fly with the second fly a size 14 Sedge pattern.  The Wulffs featured strongly as well with the Gray, Royal, Green and Yellow landing some fine fish.  On windy days a Royal Wulff ginked at the top to make sure it drags in the wave proved to be a good plan.

The Sedges are starting to make an appearance with a tentative degree of success as it is still early days for them on this lake.

Other popular patterns were the Mayflies – Green, Mosley and Ginger, the Dabblers (Peter Ross, Green, Silver and Fiery) Epoxy Buzzer, Buzzer variants, Spent Gnat, Sooty Olive, Golden Olive Bumble, CDC Mayfly Nymph, the Welshman’s Button, the Fiery Brown Sedge, the French Partridge Mayfly, the Royal Coachman, the Silver Invicta, the Cock Robin,  The Grey Klinkhammers (size 12 -14 (Emerger), the Cinnamon Sedge and Stimulators.