Lough Fishing for Salmon

I’m just back from a super two days fishing on Carrowmore lake with friends. Between our two boats we had ten salmon over two days and we rose and lost a few more. I managed four fish and had one amazing drift where I rose four fish, hooked three of them and landed two. Sounds like a numbers game? In reality, on the second day we left the taking salmon to try for some sea trout as it was starting to get silly with the salmon and we aren’t a greedy bunch! 🙂 A few of the fish we got were coloured springers that looked to have been in for a couple of months. One of the highlights for me was seeing a very large fish head and tail on my boat partners top dropper and absolutely empty his reel of backing in 10 seconds flat. Unfortunately this ended in a slack line before we even had the engine started to chase the fish. A well rested springer is an incredible fish and in such a shallow lake it requires a bit of luck and coordination between the people on board to land one of these fish on a single handed trout rod! All fish were released without harm.

The biggest fish of the trip ran me into the backing twice.

One of the most important things on any fishing trip is teatime as this provides the opportunity to belittle a friend’s angling prowess and the size of his fish!

Playing with an ND Filter.

Catch and release is becoming an important part of Irish Salmon Angling.

Fish on!

Relief! A fish safely in the net for Alan Cahill.

A quick photo before release.

Funsize for Falkus! The man behind the dark glasses has a reputation for catching Carrowmore’s biggest fish. This little fella grabbed the dropper after a much larger fish had taken the point fly!