Salmon Fishing Ireland " Season 2021" The River Lee.

To be honest I really wasn't going to go salmon fishing this season with the carry on with the brown tags, virtual licences and covid thrown in, it really was starting to be too much hard work just to go out for a cast. I know that it's a bit of a rant but if you are going to pay money for a licence you should get a licence not a pdf file and then your tags posted days later. Why not include the licence with the tags seeing as you can't fish without both anyway, and if you're not going to accept a virtual licence why send one in the first place. The Lee is just starting to be too much hard work, I have fished there all my life and to be honest I'm probably the most conservation minded angler fishing there as I have been releasing salmon for well over 30 years, long before it became fashionable. Anyway rant over and here are a few photo's of the Lee well within my 5km area for exercise. I only took a rod/reel and a size 4 barbless flying c spinner with me not having any spares due to the brown tag draw only being notified the evening before the opening day of the salmon season. How does that work I wonder as you can't fish without the tags except barbless unless you wait for the brown tag to be posted to you. I fished above the weir for a few minutes and then walked upstream and again had a few more casts but really it was only a muscle memory exercise just to get my timing in and stretch out the braid. A few nice hungry brownies hit the flying c and gave me a bit of fun so it was a bit of excitment on an otherwise dreary opening day. At least I had it better than the blackwater anglers, I heard it was very high and badly coloured basically unfishable.

Well hopefully things will calm down regarding covid and the country will open up a bit more so we can go back to trying to be a bit normal again. Even the half hour that I was out was definitely a stress relieving exercise but they'll definitely have to open it up a bit with the 5km area as all it's doing is putting all the people in one area to exercise.