Salmon Fishing Ireland 2020.

           
           
The water had just come up by 6 inches due to the salmon pass flushing water, with the extra pace on the water I decided to use a 3 inches per second sink tip rather than my normal 10ft intermediate tip. The intermediate tip sinks at a rate of 1 to 1.5 inches per second just a bit to slow for the faster water and seeing as I was hugging the large rocks I needed the faster tip to get down and move a few fish from their lies. It started working very well as I was getting the odd pull and seeing fish pitching out of the way of my fly.
The salmon hit the fly hard and fast pulling line from the reel and heading back down stream.I moved  back upstream into a more comfortable position where I knew I could exit the water fast just in case it was a good fish, using a small switch fly rod can have it's draw backs especially with high water and strong fish because you don't have the same muscle power as a proper 13 or 14 ft salmon fly rod. Seeing that the fish was only about 7 lbs I bullied it back into the pool and knowing that I was using 10lb flurocarbon tippet I was able to bring it into shallow water and beach it on the grass verge. Holding the salmon for a couple of minutes to allow it gain back it's strength I eventually released it back into the river.There has been a very good run of salmon over the past few weeks but getting the really fresh sea liced salmon at the dam is proving hard and as time moves on practically impossible with all the coloured fish in residence. Might treat myself to a day on the Blackwater or Bandon for a nice fresh fish before the season ends.