I had a few hours to spare on Tuesday so I decided to have a go on the Blackwater river, I gave the Ballyduff Bridge Salmon fishery a call and after a short conversation with Jason I headed down to have a look. Jason had informed me that the water was running a bit high and coloured but not having fished this beat before I wanted to see what it was like and gain some information for a future session. It is always good to do your homework on a beat or river that you may be fishing in the future during the quiet times so that you have all the relevant information about lies, pools and wading areas so that when the fishing is good you can optimise that time fishing rather than trial and error. The water was just over 1.91 m on the gauge and clarity was less than a foot with a temperature reading of just under 7 degrees Celsius. I fished beats 1 & 2 at the Ballyduff Bridge salmon fishery and on closer inspection of the water clarity it just seemed to be getting worse with visibility dropping off to about 8 inches, even with good headlamps on my Flying C the ever elusive Springer was never going to see it in that water. Walking the bank I was able to get a good feel for the beats and it is definitely a beautiful stretch of water for casting a fly especially on beat 1 in front of the big fishing Hut. Here are some photo's of the Ballyduff Bridge salmon fishery beats 1 & 2 moving down river towards Ballyduff bridge.
Looking upstream to the start of Beat 1
looking downstream towards the hut
End of beat 1 near the small fishing hut.
Water clarity dropped off to less than a foot.
Meeting up with Jason later in the evening he informed me that they now have a new beat upstream near Mallow called Ballygarret and this in conjunction with their other beats at : Ballyduff Bridge beats 1 & 2 , Blackstone, Magners and Ballincurrig give them over 4.5 miles of prime salmon fishing on the Blackwater river. For those anglers that need tackle or flies etc., he had just opened a small tackle shop just opposite the Ballyduff Bridge Beat. For booking or enquiries you can contact Jason on (0877205690) or Connie (0876918230).
Beat 2 from the small fishing hut looking upstream towards Ballyduff Bridge beat 1
Looking downstream towards the bridge at Ballyduff
From the bridge looking upstream, the left bank is beat 2
Looking downstream from the bridge the right hand bank is beat 2.
As you can see by the photo's there is quite a bit of water so getting a practise day while the fishing is slow will give you all the information that you will need when the salmon show up and judging by the information I got from Jason they had a really good season last year. I will be putting up the other Ballyduff Bridge Salmon Fishery beats in the next few weeks so keep an eye on the blog for those.
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