May and June fishing

I cannot believe that we have reached and passed mid summer’s day and I have not posted since March.  I have to admit that I have been busy, but I should surely have found more time…

I took a bunch of friends to Ireland in early May and we really had a tough time of the weather.  With boats hired for six days, we ended up not using them for two of those days as Corrib was more like the North Sea.  The days we went out fishing as tough.  We had chances and caught on buzzers fished slowly or static, but personally I don’t go to Ireland to fish such methods.  I was hoping for some dry fly sport.  There were some mayflies about and there were heaps of olives, but as I have often found, the fish were really not responding to the adult olives.

We had a marvellous cottage right on the lough shore and we had barely thirty metres to walk to get on board each day.  I hired a couple of the boats from Basil Shields and the third one from Paul Miller.  Both were very helpful about location of trout and what was likely to work….buzzers fished slowly.  I was most interested with Basil’s suggestion that the best time on Corrib for dry fly fishing is probably August or September.  I will maybe take advantage of that later in the year!

Back from Corrib I was on Chew or Blagdon most days in May and so far most days in June.  May was remarkable, mostly for how cold the wind was.  Day after day I was out wearing five layers minimum, and quite often six.  The wind was almost always from the west – not normally noted for such cold winds!  Even now in June there are usually cold winds to end most days, and it is a brave man who goes out on a boat without  a few layers as back-up.

I waited in vain for much surface activity in May.  I had odd evenings when the last hour would produce half a dozen chances as a few hardy trout rose – especially in the sheltered spots around the lakes.  But, on the whole there was little surface feeding and only very rarely during daylight hours.  Things changed a couple of weeks ago and on the last ten trips I have not even had to consider using a nymph!  It has been excellent fishing on Chew as many days produced fine dry fly sport.  One of the best days so far was the one that coincided with the BRFFA Orvis Classic Competition.  I happened to be taking the Orvis supremo Richard Banbury that day and from almost the start we had fish to cover.  Richard performed admirably by capturing eight fish – with one going 5lbs 7oz.  His total for the eight fish was over 27lbs.  Every fish that we caught that day was covered, yet remarkably when we chatted to anglers later in the day, many had not seen any fish to cover.

The Barrow Tanks are a favourite “escape” for me for when I have no clients  and so I started having a look up there about a month ago.  Sadly the cold wind had exactly the same effect on the fish here as on the larger lakes and on the first two trips I barely saw a fish.  Even last week there were relatively few fish moving, though a few coming blind.  I introduced client Marc Freeman to number two tank a couple of weeks ago and on a poor night he managed to land two decent fish for the tanks – both over two pounds.  Marc thought that there was a decent rise, though as he has not seen the place on form he wouldn’t know what it can be like.

I have managed another couple of “escape” trips to the river Usk.  These have been fun and each time the river has shown just how healthy it is as there have been great fly hatches and decent amounts of trout rising.  Just last week I was near Crickhowell and I had a great time with several fish returned up to about two pounds.  I don’t take fish from the river as they are wild fish and don’t need me to be denting the stocks!

I have a trip to Ireland next week for the caenis feeders so I am hoping for some settled weather.  I am not sure what the chances of that are!