Below are some pictures from my 2014 fishing season in Ireland with clients, friends and family. I run a guiding service from Dublin and while the fishing has been relatively poor with low water levels for much of the season, when I sat down and put my photos together, it struck me that even though the fishing wasn’t as good this year as previous years, fishing in Ireland really is a beautiful pastime!
2014 will be remembered as one of the worst for Atlantic Salmon. On the river Boyne close to Dublin the counter currently reads 700 returning fish where the conservation limit is somewhere around 14,000 fish. IFI use the counted figure as approx 50% of the run to allow for fish that don’t go through the counter.
I know from friends who keep an eye on the spawning streams that there were very few fish on the redds last winter and normally in spring we would have to move away from fishing certain areas to avoid catching kelts. This spring however there were very very few kelts in the river.
Anyway we will see what next year brings and maybe things will become clearer.As always anglers are an optimistic bunch and we live in hope for 2015!
There was occasional good river trout fishing to be had but my encounters with meat eating trout were few and far between.
I really enjoyed spending time fishing with my boys now that they are old enough to bring to the river…We found a couple of excellent pools on a small stream near Dublin with some great trout. My eldest is well and truly hooked!
In august I managed to loose a huge river trout, he fell off close to the net so I was lucky enough to get a good look at him and will keep the weight estimate to myself.It was a little painful not to get a picture of him! Anyway I don’t mind too much as I’m off to Iceland for monster trout next April with Marcin from Salmo-Adventures.
If you are interested in going along let me know and I’ll pass on details.

Thanks for dropping in for a look and let me know your thoughts on the 2014 season in the comments box below. Thanks Keith