Salmon on a Dry Fly.

           
Having fished down the pool with my switch fly rod I decided to give the salmon fishing a rest and change over to dry fly fishing for trout with my new 5 wt fly rod that I made myself. Really the rocks at Beat 1 have ruined the pool and trying to fish it with a salmon fly is near impossible due to the amount of big rocks that have been put in there. They have changed the hydrodynamics completely causing lots of back eddies and upsurges which are useless when trying to fish a salmon fly down because the line is being dragged backwards and the fly is sideways being held up by the numerous eddies. There was no need to put these rocks in and destroy a perfectly good fishery and it is the same for all the beats since the introduction of these boulders.
I put up a size 18 emerger and started fishing covering a few rising trout when a nice rise caught my eye, watching that area I noticed another rise and then I covered it with my fly.There was a lovely head and tail over the dry fly and lifting into the fish it immediately became airborne and straight away with the flash of silver I knew it was a nice salmon. I had to be very careful as I was using a 6x tippet but the rod really cushioned the fight and allowed me to net the grilse safely. I normally tail or beach all my salmon but fearing that it would break the line and take my fly with it I decided it was better in the net. It was a lovely sealiced grilse of about 4 lbs which I quickly released back into the river. Later that evening just as it was getting dark I hooked another grilse of about 5 lbs in the same area with that same size 18 emerger and after a great fight it was again released to fight another day. It's rare enough catching a salmon on a dry fly but catching two in the same day maybe I should switch over to dry fly fishing for salmon in the future... maybe not as I reckon I would be waiting a long time to repeat that session again.

Salmon Fishing Ireland 2019.

   
           
The last few weeks have been very bad for salmon fishing due to the water flow or lack of it on the River Lee. The Dam haven't been generating water for over a month just barely a trickle has been coming out and to be honest it's just not good enough. There has to be a minimum flow that they cannot go below for the sake of the fish and water quality. We used to have a standard high water mark and a minimum low water discharge but in the last couple of years that has been eroded away and now the present low water mark is well under a foot lower than that. There is barely a flow there now and all the new rocks that were put in are showing above the water line which is a joke as they weren't needed in the first place.
When I arrived the water was on full load and I started spinning up at beat 1 but after a few minutes I decided to move down to beat 4 as there was very little happening there. Beat 4 is deeper water and any fish that had been in the system over the last few weeks would be holding there. Normally fresh fish will hold for awhile if there are other fish about and that seemed like a good plan but unfortunately no fresh fish showed or came into the beat. I had just hit and dropped a salmon so I covered the same fish a few times when I got a positive take and we were on. Early in the fight I knew that it was a coloured salmon and decided to put plenty of pressure on it to get it in fast for a quick release. The salmon had other ideas and gave a great scrap throwing in a few great jumps and sizzling runs which stripped line from the reel on several occasions and impressed me with it's power and stamina. On landing the salmon I realized that it was a hen fish and also a hatchery fish and after a few minutes resting up I released it back into the river where it swam off strong. Unfortunately I cannot see much improvement for the salmon fishing in the near future if the water is going to be kept at this extreme low level.