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.