Salmon and trout angling | Coarse angling
Monday 21st to Sunday 27th July 2008.
With the onset of dry weather once again, the Drowes River gradually fell over the week and is now reading just over 4 on the gauge at the Four Masters Bridge. The river continues to produce good numbers of grilse with some 30 grilse to 5½lb caught for the week. There were a fair number of rods fishing over the week with ea greater part of these being visiting rods staying for the week in the Fishery Cottages. The weekend was quiet however due to the bright, hot, sunny weather and easterly winds. Given here is a selection of the catches. On Wednesday, Columba Fitzpatrick recorded 2 grilse caught on worm. On Thursday, Bruno Vallelian accounted for 3 grilse caught weighing from 3 to 4½lb caught on shrimp. Regular visitors, John Wilshaw (of ‘Trout & Salmon’ fame) and his party recorded 11 grilse caught for the week to 5½lb on both fly & worm. The forecast for the coming week is for thundery showers so we may get a rise in water heights if the some of these fall within the catchment.
Lough Melvin was quiet this week with few anglers fishing for trout. However, for some of those that did fish, there was some good sport to be had with the trout fishing picking up this week. There were good catches of sonaghan out over the deep water. One angler had 7 good sonaghan one day and reported that ‘the trout were going mad’. He was fishing over the deep water off Ross Point and said that there was a fair hatch of buzzers at the time.
There were also only a few anglers out after salmon over the week and I have not heard of any salmon caught. There was little fishing at the weekend, probably due to the very bright and hot conditions and winds coming from an easterly direction.
With little rainfall of note, the Owenea ran at low summer levels for the whole week and the gauge average for the week read a low 0.12 metres. There were 15 visiting rods fishing for the week but with the river so low and conditions hot & sunny for the most part, fishing was difficult. I have not heard of any catches to date.
The Eany received small floods on Monday & Tuesday (0.44 & 0.45 metres respectively) which, although not good floods, were sufficient for fish to ascend the river. With the onset of dry weather, the river then fell away to low summer levels once again reading only 0.16 metres by Sunday. The gauge average for the week read 0.29 metres. Despite some reasonable conditions at the start of the week, there were few rods fishing, with only 12 visiting rods fishing for the week. Raymond Doran recorded a 6½lb grilse caught from the Fish Counter Pool on a worm on Friday.
30 July 2007
Some English anglers staying in the Killeshandra area fished the Derries and report plenty of small fish and some nice Bream from Inishmuck using maggot caster and corn. Some other anglers report Bream up to 3½lb from Foxholes, good Hybrids and Tench up to 4lb at Killykeen.
St John, Kiltybarden, Brackley and Drumlona are all fishing good with good Tench on Drumlona.
Night fishing and early morning is producing good bags of fish in the Lough Oughter area particularly at Rann Castle. Eight English anglers staying in the Gowna area fished Killykeen match stretch and bagged good bags of fish. Bream up to 9½lb were reported at Bakers Bridge recently.