Salmon Fishing Ireland 2017

The end of the season is fast approaching and I have made it my business to try and get as many sessions in as possible even though they are short evening sessions they are still productive. The river has a lot of dark or coloured salmon and with water levels being high it's very hard to present the fly in such fast water especially near the Dam. I was lucky to arrive just as the water was rising from half load up to full load and caught it at the perfect speed to present a small tube fly with a 5 inches per second sink tip on a floating line and hooked up straight away to this nice male salmon of about 9 lbs. The take was strong and as you can imagine it went straight down stream on a good long run, the first thing that entered my head was that I should have swapped out the 10 lb tippet for the stronger 15 lb tippet but being in a hurry to fish I assumed that it would be okay. The strong pull of the fish in conjunction to the heavy flow of the water really tested out that 10 lb tippet but the soft action on my Spey rod cushioned the impact on the line and allowed me to bring the fish up river into calmer water where I played it out away from the main current. I must admit you really get a different fight from a coloured salmon they know all the snaggy areas and it's the first thing that they will do is get in amongst the rocks and boulders and rub up against them to get rid of the fly or spinner. I had to find a soft patch to beach the salmon as there has been a lot of work going on at beat 1 over the last week or so improving the croy's and lie's and it looks promising so far, I beached the salmon on some soft grass and with one pull on my pliers the fly was out, holding the fish for a few moments I waited till it was ready and released it back out into the river. This time of year I make sure to have a long nose pliers handy because the salmon at this time of year have sharp teeth and you don't want to tear you fingers up retrieving a fly especially from a coloured fish. I met and lost a few fish downstream on spinner so for the few hours that I was out it was enjoyable especially in that nice autumnal sunshine. I will photograph the new croy's and put the pictures up in my next post, the water was just too high to take any good pictures, I can't wait to see them in low water to see what impact they will have on water flow and direction hopefully it will improve the river for the 2018 season.