Hard Work Golden Rewards

I really like writing theses little snippets about my fishing escapades, but its hard to keep the site updated, but i will try. Thanks to everyone who wrote to me and any ideas to improove the page are great. I have added like buttons and you can now comment on the page too. Thanks again to fjord for supplying me with waders and boots again this year. As you can see in the photos i wear them a lot and they are extremely durable.

Back to the fishing

The lake fishing have really come into its own in the west, with buzzer hatches and now Olives, most anglers have turned their attentions to Lough Corrib aind Lough Mask. But it seems that the weekend anglers have hit the Jackpot weather wise so far this year, as any day I am off it seems to be blowing hard. So it was an easy choice to go and fish the River Liffey a place I love to fish. Whether it be at the headwaters near Ballysmuttenor lower down towards, Ballymore Eustace, North Kildare Water and continuing on down stream to Clane and Celbridge.

Just to be clear, most of the water on the Liffey is managed by clubs and if you want to fish a section of the River Liffey please do some homework and see if a club is managing the stretch you want to fish. If there is, you will need to buy a day ticket.

My guide for the day was once again Peter Doherty, I dont think there is anyone that knows the Liffey better. I joke calling him my guide, as we fish together a lot and we have learnt a lot together over the years about river fishing and it is always nice to go fishing with him.

It was a cold day when we headed to Sallins to do a bit of fluff flinging, Peter reported that the river was fishing slow,  even though the season had started really well. The Iron Blue Olives were yet to make an appearance, but there were some olives about. Hopefully we would not have to nymph all day.

We normally fish together when we are on the river, taking one side of the river or the other and working our way up the the stretch. We were both set up to fish the klink and dink or New Zealand style, fishing one nymph behind a dry fly. The cast was a normal 9ft tapered cast with 3ft of 3lb mono tippet tied on the end, attached to this was a well dressed size 12 klinkhammer, a lenght of flurocarbon is tied to the bend of the hook of the klinkhammer and to the flurocarbon a tungsten beaded nymph. The lenght of flurocarbon behind the dry fly is the dictated by the speed of the surrent, the depth of water and the weight of the nymph.

Pheasant tail nymphs and hares ears are the main stay of early season nymphing, there are so many tyings of these flies. You can fill a box purely with pheasant tails and another with hares ear variants. Again I will be doing a blog on the tyings I use, so bare with me.

I fished up the right hand side and Peter fished up the left. We picked off trout and salmon parr as we went. It was fun but there were no olives hatching at all, we fished up some lovely pools catching fish between 6 and 12 inches. But not as many as I expected. The fish were not feeding at all and stomach pumping the fish seemed to tell the same story, with the contents of the fish stomachs being shrimp and snails. At the top of this stretch there is a weir and sure enough Peter caught some larger fish here. They fought really well in the strong current.  It was noticable that the temperature had increased and a few fish had started to rise.

Peter continued to fish the area at the weir,  but I went back down stream to see if there were any other fish rising. Sure enough Olives started to hatch and fish started to rise, I changed to a single dry and 0.09 tippet. The fish took the dry nice and easy, its important not to strike hard into these fish as you will break every time. Lifting your rod gently is good enough to set the hook and normally once you have connected with the fish the light leader should hold.

I had a great hours fishing taking a lot of fish on the drys, but it was over too quick. It was time to change area, so we headed to Clane. This water is managed by Clane Anglers and further on down by Dublin Trout Anglers. You will need a permit to fish this water and permits can be purchased Cleeres fishing tackle shop in Clane, it is well worth the few Euros.

The olive hatch was over for the day but the trout were still happy to feed on the Simulium Larvae and its adults black fly form after the Olives have finished for the day. This little creature is a huge part of the diet of Liffey trout.

 It was very noticeable that the fish were still holding in the tail ends of the pools, normally at this time of the year they should be in the first third of the runs. It just prooves that the hatches of olives are not as good as they were last year. There are also a lot less simulium on the weeds than there has been in previous years, whether this is due to the pollution that occurred recently or not is anyones guess.

I enjoyed the last hour or so on the water, catching on both drys and nymphs. The strenght of these little golden missiles is remarkable. And the colours are amazing, with blue sheens comimg from their gill plate covers.

I started my fishing on the river Dodder with my father many many years ago as a child and I think every child should at least get the chance to experience the wonders of our rivers and streams in Ireland . Young and old alike should learn to appreciate the wildness of the streams and the riverbanks. If you sit there still enough you really never know what you will see.

Back to the lake next week, another venture upon Lough Lene. Lets see if i can catch one or two

Comments