Salmon Fishing Ireland 2014 Blackwater River.

Having a few hours to spare and with the weather being quite mild, no wind and very little rain i decided to give Ballyhooley Bridge a cast. Arriving at the bridge i met Ian from Blackwater lodge and we both laughed on seeing the height of the river, it was higher than the opening day. There must be  some difference between the gauges because i thought that the river had dropped slightly on paper but seeing it up close and personal it had risen by at least 10 inches. Having a lot of small rivers and streams flowing into a main river can make a huge difference to water height downstream so people should take great care when approaching swollen flooded rivers. The banks can be very unstable and in some cases undercut, just standing on the bank can cause it to fall in so again great care must be observed when walking near rivers at this time of year. There must be beavers upstream near Mallow because of the amount of trees passing me down during my fishing session and that in it self can be another hazzard especially if you hook one by mistake..... I covered the beat well and fished upstream spinning with Flying "C"'s and downstream with heavy Toby's but to no avail, no fish seen, met ot taken. The water clarity was only about 8 - 10 inches as can be seen from one of my photo's, so the spinner would have had to bump the fish on the head first before i could catch it. Here are some photo's of the Ballyhooley Bridge beat in extra high water.

                                         
                                           Top of Ballyhooley Bridge beat looking upstream

                                          Looking downstream to the bridge

 
                                          Water clarity was only 8 - 10 inches

                                         
                                          Ballyhooley Bridge at high tide..........

I will wait till the water drops down to below 2m on the gauge before my next session on the Blackwater river but looking at the weather forecast for Friday evening and into the weekend i would say that the river will definitely be unfishable for most of next week. As most anglers can appreciate after a hard day spent spinning or fly fishing in very high water one sometimes feels that they have a monkey on their back, well today i had an oversized silver back gorilla.