Salmon and trout angling | Coarse angling
Monday 28th May to Sunday 3rd June 2007.
Water levels on the Drowes were fairly low for the week though the fishery is still receiving great runs of salmon. The grilse arrived this week with a number of 3 to 4lb salmon recorded. The fishery was fairly quiet. The majority of rods fishing were those renting the Lareen Fishery Cottages with few day visitors. Despite low angling pressure, there were good numbers of salmon recorded for the week. Davy McDowell recorded 3 grilse caught from Thursday to Sunday. The fish weighed 4, 4 & 6lb and were all caught on shrimp. Stephen Motes accounted for 3 grilse weighing 3, 3½ & 4lb all caught on the fly (shrimp fly). Tom White recorded an 8lb salmon which he sportingly returned. Marty King accounted for a 6½ grilse caught on a prawn from the Washstones and Jim Atckinson recorded a 7lb fish caught on the fly.
Water levels on the Eske were fair on Monday but dropped to low levels by Wednesday and remained low until a good flood on Sunday. The fishery was quiet however with no visiting rods fishing for the week.
It is still early in the season on the Eany Fishery and there has been few rods fishing to date. There was some nice water over the weekend which led to a number of salmon ascending the fishery. The first salmon of the season was caught on the 23rd of last month by local angler Gary McHugh. The fished weighed 11lb and was caught from the Devlin Pool on a spinner. At the time of writing the weather is dry and the sun bright and hot. We hope some more rain comes our way!
The Owenea ran at very low levels all week until a slight lift on Saturday and a good flood (0.48m) on Sunday. The gauge average for the week read 0.20 metres. There were only 7 visiting rods fishing for the week and surprisingly, none of these fished during the good water over the weekend. I have no records of fish caught this week as yet but details of a grilse caught on the 20th May by Maurice Kennedy. The fish weighed 4½lb and was caught from beat 6 on a spinner.
05 June 2007
Two anglers from York, Simon Bradley and Graham Wood sent in this report following a memorable fishing Holiday in the Northern Region:
"We have just got back from a fantastic holiday in Ireland, where we have spent 10 days fishing in the lakes around Arva and Gowna. We stayed at the Breffni Arms hotel in Arva, where we were very well fed and looked after, as usual.
The fishing we experienced was some of the best in the 15 years weve been going.
day 1: sat 26 th May Fished channel at Gulladoo, best weight 25 lbs of skimmers and hybrids. Bites all day long.
day 2: sun 27th May Fished the channel again, best weight 30 lbs of skimmers and hybrids. Bites all day again.
day 3: Mon 28th May Fished 2 of the deep pegs down the track on Dernafest, wind was in our faces, beat weight 42 lbs of skimmers and hybrids. Excellent sport.
day 4: Tues 29th May. Fished 2 pegs just after the 2nd style on Church Lake at Andy s point. Best weight 20lbs skimmers and hybrids.
day 5: Wed 30th May, Fished same pegs again, best weight 30lbs of skimmers and hybrids, and 2 large bream were caught over 4 lbs each.
Day 6: Thurs 31st may. Fished same pegs again, after pre-baiting them the night before. What a difference, best weight 61 lbs, half large bream and half skimmers. Best bream weighed 5 1/4 lbs.
Day 7: Fri 1st June: Fished same pegs again, produced fish all day long, best weight 91 lbs of large bream and skimmers.
Day 8: Sat 2nd June: Fished same pegs again, but crosswind had taken smaller fish into car park section. Best weight was still 56 lbs of large bream to 5 lbs, with sweetcorn been the only worthwhile bait.
Day 9: Sun 3rd June: Fancied a change of scenery, so went to Cullies lake, fully expecting the weights to drop dramatically, how wrong we were. Managed to get the bream going, and caught them all afternoon, for a weight of 101 lbs. The first 20 bream averaged 3 lbs each, with individual ones up to 4 1/2 lbs. All taken on sweetcorn.
Day 10: Mon 4th June : Back to Cullies again , only to find the bream had moved, but the best weight for the half day was 21 1/2 lbs of roach and hybrids.
We will both be returning next year for sure.
All weights quoted here were weighed correctly and not estimated. All were filmed with camcorder for good measure. Hope this report is of use to other anglers, take plenty of sweetcorn is the best advice we could give, we got through 70 tins. "
The Northern Regional Fisheries Board presents this web site as a useful guide to salmon, trout and coarse fishing in Donegal, Leitrim and Cavan.