Salmon and trout angling | Coarse angling
Monday 7th to Sunday 13th July 2008.
The Drowes has risen somewhat once again and the gauge the Four Masters Bridge is reading around 4. The week was fairly quiet however and there were less visiting rods fishing than would be expected, especially since the weekend was a bank holiday weekend in Northern Ireland.
The river is receiving a good run of grilse at present and of those rods that did fish, many were successful. Most of the fish caught were in the latter half of the week. Alan Collonvilla’s Belgian Party recorded 7 grilse to 4lb for their weeks fishing. M. Beatty accounted for 2 grilse caught on a spinner. Columba Fitzpatrick recorded 4 grilse caught for the week with 3 of these caught on Friday. On Thursday, Chris Coulter recorded a 5lb grilse and Steven McNee caught 2 grilse to 3lb on worm. Mr H. White accounted for a 7½lb fish caught on a fly (#14 cascade). On Friday, S. Oliver recorded a 7½lb salmon caught on the fly from the Blackwater and Harry Kerr accounted for 3 grilse caught on the shrimp. Aaron Carville recorded an 8lb salmon caught on the worm. On Sunday, Aaron Carville recorded 3 fish caught in the Sea Pools weighing 2, 4 & 8lb. There were also a number of other anglers who recorded single grilse caught over the week. Unfortunately, there is little rain forecast for the first half of the week but the Drowes is slow to drop and conditions should remain fair for the week.
The Lough was up again slightly this week but still remains fairly low. There were a number of boats out fishing for salmon and I heard of three grilse caught but there was no major effort on the salmon front this week. Most of the anglers that were out were fishing for sonaghan over the deeps. Reports are that fish are there but hard to catch with the trout ‘coming short’ and hard to hook. We are blaming it on the heavy and thundery kind of weather we are having.
There was plenty of rainfall in Ulster this week, just not where we are! The Owenea ran at low levels all week and with little water there were few anglers in attendance. The gauge average for the week read only 0.10 metres and there were only 6 rod days fished for the whole week. I have no reported catch to date.
The Eany received a small flood reading 0.58 metres on Thursday but for the rest of the week the river ran at low levels. The gauge average for the week read only 0.24 metres. There were 14 visiting rods fishing for the week with 6 of these fishing on Thursday and 5 on Sunday. I have no records as yet of rod catches. The previous Sunday (6th), Dimitrios Kandiotos had a good day with 2 salmon caught on worm. The fish weighed 5½lb and 16½lb and were caught from the Fish Counter Pools.
The forecast for the first half of the week is for little rain though the forecasters have not been particularly accurate when predicting rainfall over West Donegal to date this season. Watch this space!
No report