After the rain

The weather Gods have pissed on us for more than a week now and the county of Mayo is sodden. Rivulets of water are still running across roads and the fields are flooded. Most of the rivers around here have burst their banks and spilled their contents across the landscape. And amidst this deluge we hopedContinue

Connemara Black Dabbler

I admit to absolutely loving this fly. Over the years it has given me so many trout in all sorts of conditions that I reach for it when I have no real idea what else to try. I place huge faith in it and it very rarely let me down. The dressing is almost theContinue

My take on the Gold Butcher

Everyone knows this fly – right? Gold Butchers are just a ‘normal’ Butcher with a gold tinsel body instead of a silver one! Well I see this pattern very differently, and I would urge you to make up a few for yourselves. It is a versatile fly which works well for trout (brown and rainbow),Continue

Pass my hammer, it is getting cold

It’s mid-November and the year is showing its age. Leaves clog the drains around the house now and the heating boiler had to be coaxed into life again with some deft hammer blows to the pump housing and a liberal stream of expletives. We were blessed with an unusually calm period of high pressure duringContinue

Fly tying season

Now the angling is over for another year I will start to post some fly patterns and tying instructions on this blog. Here in Ireland we are quite conservative when it comes to different styles of fly but I use a wide range of different flies to meet the conditions so don’t expect just DabblersContinue

Back to the rain

A couple of windy, rainy days this week seem to herald the onset of winter properly and the forecast is depressingly ominous with high winds and even some snow promised before the week is out. I went out on the Cashel River one more time today, more in homage to the past season than withContinue

Apres fishing

Angling in Ireland has many facets, some challenging but most pleasant and convivial. I want to talk about one of these additional joyous addendums to our sport today, the Irish pub. I expect most (if not all) of you have visited a so called Irish pub close to you. They have, after all, polluted theContinue

Aberdonian spends Three Euro!!!!!!!

While mooching around in a small tackle shop down an alley in Athlone the other day I happened upon a basket full of odd and ends of tackle sporting the tempting sign ‘half price or less’. So I plunged into the task of sifting through the assorted rigs, floats, baits and sinkers. Luminous poppers, bouncingContinue

Do Pike migrate?

To kill some time and at the very least get out in the fresh air for a few hours I have been Pike fishing on three recent occasions. Results have been steadily declining from 10 fish down to 8 and then only 5 on my last outing. That is fair enough, but the really interestingContinue