If your meanderings through cyberspace lead you occasionally to this blog there is a good chance you will recognise the name of Harry Abbott.
Harry is one of these guys who has fly fished all over the place and caught many kinds of fish and one of his fish, an Arapaima he taken in Thailand, is one of the most strikingly beautiful fish I have ever seen. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Our days here have settled into a familiar routine. If we had any brains we would be up at first light and looking for trout but this does not happen. We put the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the Guinness brewery in Dublin. At dawn when the trout are active we are nowhere to be seen.
Breakfast is eaten at O´Connors just down the road from Mark´s place in Westport where we can steal a little internet and spend a little while in civilized company. This is where we are now. There is a toasted sausage sandwich in front of each of us, and a coffee to help kickstart the day. O´Connors is where we talk strategy and decide on a venue for the day´s fishing. Continue reading
When it comes to trout fishing here in the west there is a choice to be made. One option is to fish one of the big loughs like Mask or Carra in the hope of picking up some potentially large trout while another is to head to one of the many small loughs which hold good stocks of feisty little fellas.
Having had a slow day on Carra the previous day, we decided yesterday that we would head to the hills and see if we could catch some of the small dark trout that live in the mountain loughs. Continue reading
The pints we consumed were not celebratory as they had been the previous night but a consoling remedy after a day´s rejection by the trout of Lough Carra.
To be honest we needed little consolation. Everyone who plays the trout fishing game might expect things to be inconsistent, particularly at this time of the year but we were nevertheless surprised at how little activity we observed. Sean and Mark each had a couple of furtive rises but put these down to small fish but my own flies were untroubled over the several hours they were on the water. If we failed to catch it was not from lack of effort. We offered those damn trout everything they might have asked for, wets and dries and buzzers, and we drifted over very promising looking water. The weather conditions seemed fine. Who knows why things pan out this way sometimes. It is what it is. C´est la vie. Continue reading
Every now and then my brother Sean and our old friend Mark arrange a little rendezvous in the west of Ireland to see if we can catch a few trout and yesterday we convened in Westport for this long-anticipated fishing trip.
Mark Twain once said that the worst winter he ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco and, while things are not quite that bad here, to begin to imagine summer weather in the west of Ireland it is helpful to consider winter weather in as a starting point. Continue reading
Harry and I headed out on Rutland again today to do battle with the trout. It was a quiet day for everyone and the fishing people back at base told us that very few fish had been taken. Harry and I had one fish apiece.
Rutland is, very crudely, a V shaped body of water with one arm north of the other and so they are called the north and south arms respectively. On the far side of where they meet, again very crudely, is the club house where boats can be hired (there are 65 of them) and you can buy a ticket to fish it. The boats float (an important design feature in my view) and have an engine at the back. You need an engine here as it is a big water – 3100 acres. Continue reading
I have just spent a day on Rutland Reservoir boat fishing with Harry Abbott. Harry used to be a mate of mine but today he caught loads of fish whereas and I caught nearly none and so now I hate him. If he were writing this blog he would be speaking about fish landed, others lost and a big lump of a trout that swam off and emptied his reel of fly line in a matter of a few seconds before the line parted. He has just headed off to bed and I bet he will be tossing and turning now and will have trouble sleeping as he relives the drama of those moments.
We never saw that fish but Harry reckons it was significantly heavier than his four pounder which was the first and best fish of the day. Continue reading
It has been a very hot summer here so far. It can seem sometimes as though opening the front door is like opening the door of a blast furnace. Outside, our dog Brutus is panting away. He lies in the shade but it is not cool even there. Brutus is a campo dog and he has never been in the habit of being indoors but even he will sneak in just a little and lie just inside the front door where the tiles on the floor are a little cooler.
The heat has also put the brakes on fishing to a large extent. The river is warm and the fish are in the same kind of torpid mood as Brutus, the other dogs and the rest of us. Where it is deep enough on the reservoirs the bass will leave the shallows for much of the day and early morning and late evening are likely to be the optimum times to catch them. Continue reading
Yesterday I received a short message by email and a single attached photograph. It came all the way from British Columbia and showed the irrepressible John Langridge holding onto the tail of a fish he had just landed. This fish, a white sturgeon, was about the weight of me, my wife Catriona and our two teenage kids put together!
I have only a few details about the capture of the fish. It was taken in the Fraser River which is the longest river in British Columbia and took 45 minutes to subdue. It towed the boat along as if it were a dog being taken for a walk and was eventually landed a full mile from where it was hooked. Continue reading
