fishydreams

I had a chance to meet up last week in Ireland with my brother Sean and our old fishing buddy Mark for a long anticipated fishing trip. This was to have been a multi-day adventure but Mark announced that he would have to cut things short due to work commitments and, naturally, he was berated by Sean and me for getting his life priorities arseways. 

The demands of family and work make these gatherings increasingly rare and it is two years or so since our last. Sean and Mark both live in Ireland and have a chance to meet up more frequently. They squeeze in a little mayfly fishing up on Lough Arrow each year and might contrive to fit in another day or two at other times. But the last time our unholy trinity convened was when the two boys managed to make it over to Spain and to fly fish for barbel on my local rivers, the Guadalhorce and the Río Grande. Last week we were based in Cork, garrisoned at Sean´s place, and the rivers flowing nearby yield not gypsy barbel, but brown trout and the occasional salmon smolt or sea trout.

Mark and Sean and I don´t take ourselves too seriously which is probably very wise since nobody else takes us seriously either. We spend a large proportion of our time joking around or making plans which are invariably be undone by the vagaries of the weather. It is not lost on us that there is something more than a little ridiculous about three middle aged men traipsing around County Cork in pursuit of a few modest trout that are briefly extracted from the river, admired and then popped straight back. Our respective wives worry that we are mentally unbalanced. Fair enough, such analysis is evidence-based and anyway they tend to be pretty tuned in to this kind of thing.

Our first fishing day together was April Fool’s day and, in the end, we tried our hands on three different rivers. First up was the Shournagh which is on Sean´s doorstep. Persistent recent rains had made the river rise but it was running clear. Because of the heavy flows I started out with a streamer on a sinking line but the fish showed little interest in that although in the end my streamer was eagerly grabbed by the trailing branches of a tree on the opposite side of the river. There it remained. There was enough water pushing through the river to make the journey across to unhook the fly somewhat hazardous and I could imagine losing my footing and taking a good dunking in the process.

Sean got things rolling with the first trout which happened to be his first of the year. I was on hand to witness this and to take a photograph. It was a characteristically pretty trout. More than that, it was good omen. Shortly after Sean had returned his fish to the river we convened on the bank and put our three grey heads together. We concluded that the river was still some way off the level needed for decent fishing and that we should rest it and pray that the rain holds off. What we needed, we figured, was a plan B.

And Plan B turned out to be the river Bride. Curiously, I had fished a river Bride in Cork before, many years ago. Sean had been working in the University of Cork (UCC) at the time and he dropped me at the river en route to his laboratory and collected me again when his work was done. The Bride was a lovely little river and I had to fish the smallest dries in my box to tempt little free-rising browns. Sean and I had a pint or two afterwards and it was in the pub that he let me know that he and Katy were expecting their first child. I was the first to be told. It was a big moment. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and that first child has been followed by three more. That secret bump, growing each day a little larger, became Molly Hogan, recently turned 21, and as nice a person as you would meet anywhere.

But the river Bride that was our plan B river was not the same one I had fished previously. How many River Brides are there in Cork? I don´t know. At least two! On this river I decided to change tactics and fish a nymph in the deepest glide I could find. I had a new nymphing rod I was keen to use and that I had purchased over Christmas during a moment of cabin fever and had been sent to Sean´s house. I rigged this thing up with a couple of bead head nymphs and in little enough time I had my first modest trout of the year. As luck would have it, Sean was on hand to take a picture of it. The trout, characteristically, was very pretty but the lower half of its tail seems to have been worn down a little, possibly by constant abrasion against a rock or other subsurface structure in its habitual lie on the stream bed. I don´t know if I will get round to painting this fish. It seems like a worthy project. Sean´s photo is certainly good enough to work from and I question whether in doing so I should “airbrush” the fish´s tail or paint, as far as I am able, its true likeness.

Anyway, that wee trout was followed by four more and all the fish took the small nymph fished on the dropper above a more substantially weighted nymph to get to the depths I hoped the fish might be holding.

When we were done with the Bride it was time for plan C – the Dripsey river. This was a very pretty river but I struggled on it while trying to continue to fish nymphs. Abundant weeds created a silky green curtain a full foot or more above the river bed and the gaps between the weed beds were quite narrow and awkward to fish. The river itself was gin clear. But while I struggled Sean and Mark did much better on wet flies and we continued to work on the Dripsey until a combination of feeling cold and the temptation to go for a pint or two got the better of us.

It had been a fine day. In the local parlance we had mighty craic, as we always do. We had not re-written any record books but with five fish apiece we were reasonably pleased with ourselves and felt that the fishing gods, while not having been madly generous, had been at least fair and even-handed.

Three world class trout fishermen committed to their joint mission of taking the sport to dizzying new heights!

Getting ready for action. Squeezing into waders is not as easy as it used to be!

This is Mark fishing the Shournagh

And me