fishydreams

The weather people were right about the wind yesterday and it was a good call to steer clear of Mask and Corrib. Instead we headed off to a little lough called Ballinlough which is stocked with some brown and rainbow trout. There was nobody at home at the house where you pay for a day´s fishing and no telephone number to call and so we decided to take out one of the boats and offer to settle up at the end of the day.

I tend to judge wind strength with my hat. There are two wind settings; one is low strength which allows my hat to remain on my head, the other is high wind which results in the hat being blown off into the water. In high winds I leave the hat in the boat to avert this kind of catastrophe but get cold ears as a result. It´s not a great system but, then again, nothing is perfect. As the winds picked up and dropped off yesterday the hat migrated from the wooden boat seat to the top of my head and back again.

After we guiltily sneaked out on a boat we had no permission to use and we were barely 100 yards offshore, some fella started waving to us from the jetty and we figured our number was up. It was a little awkward because I had a fish on at the time but I took it to hand at the side of the boat and let it go again.

This guy´s name was Tom and he was the man to arrange fishing with. The fishery had a list of regulations posted on a notice board, a tidy jetty with a few boats and good access. It seemed like a pretty neat operation to us but there was no phone number anywhere to be seen. This is the kind of oversight that seems comfortably familiar to us.

Tom is a nice guy. He didn´t give us any grief about taking the boat out and had good things to say about Sean´s dog, Meg. He was into dogs himself and has represented the country at sheep dog trials and was a judge on One Man and his Dog. He told us the lough was fishing well and so it proved. We managed 9 trout between us, 5 browns and 4 rainbows and all were returned to the water.

The little routine that we have created for ourselves continued for the rest of the day. After we had broken down our tackle we headed to Westport for a take away feed that is likely to reduce our life expectancies by a few years and then it was off to the pub.

We had a real blast in the west. There were plenty of fish, plenty of pints, plenty of fresh air. There was also plenty of the kind of talk and nonsense that men produce when there are no womens´eyes on them or children to offend.

Sean is now on his way to Cork to pick up a couple of kids and then he is off to Valentia. He will probably be on the road for 8 hours. Mark is opposite me on the train from Westport to Dublin. On either side of us cows are flying by. We are all a little tired, all a little hungover but everything we have done over the last few days we would do again in an instant. If only we could.

This is the first rainbow trout I have taken in Ireland

Two fine specimens

We pinched one of these and headed out into the lough.

Mark´s face is a picture of jubilation! After a few days of hard fishing his whiskers grow and he looks a bit like Desperate Dan.