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March 07
(these reports are displayed as most recent first)
25th to 31st March
With the weather still trapped in the High pressure mode.
This of course leaves the wind from the East and sharp Frosts at night. Very little is moving anywhere in the river just the odd fish, Peter has been doing his best of late but to catch anything worth shouting about. Frank has been down Malady's on several occasions throughout the week and only managed 3 small Perch; I myself tried twice to catch fish along side Peter and only secured 1 Hybrid.
Now we have Water in the local stretch of the Grand Canal after having a new road bridge built just outside Ballymahon, Chris and I had a good look and found to our surprise a good head of small Roach. Having the rod in the car I manage to catch my first Roach although it was tiny.
We will be shortly into April and hopefully things will pick up with a change in the wind direction.
21st - 24th March
Peter was well enough to head for the river over these last 3 days with Wednesday and Thursday not producing too much just the odd Perch. But Friday was his day, leading him up to the top-man position with an outstanding catch of Bream (not total) but size, the best one weighing in at 7 lbs 2 ozs all (New Bream) with a collection of smaller ones.
This prompted all 4 of us to rush out this Saturday under great conditions which has been with us since Wednesday. Peter, Chris and I fished at Tommy Foxe's swims 30 /32 Frank, fished Malady's. Very little was had by us three, John had one bream, as seen above, and just one nibble from Frank's venue.
17th - 19th March
Cold, Wet and Windy over St Patrick's weekend as usual.
No fishing, due to the lack of
co-ordination of faculties over the Bank Holiday
here with all the
celebrations and "The Black Stuff"
12th to 16th March
The weather has not been the best
over the week with heavy rain and strong winds
beside the tempeture falling
making it difficult to fish.
But with the aid of the Brolly, and true grit, Peter and Dennis braved all on 3 sessions making it the last for Dennis on this trip. Overall Dennis came out tops with good sport in swim 33 in touchable distant of Peter managed to land some good fish with the best, a "New Bream" coming in at 3lb 12ozs along with several smaller Bream and the first of the Roach plus a few Perch falling to Red Maggots via the feeder fed ground bait
On the same session Peter found it difficult to land his fish, having hooked plenty he failed to bank most of them. With constant hook changes, it still ended with the same result. But on his other outings there was no problem, with some small catches of Hybrids and again "New Bream" followed with a couple of Roach.
With reference to "New Bream" Peter and I have this theory that these New bream are a complete new generation of fish. With the demise of our Old Bream to which "we" still say it's has been a Virus as over the same period we and many other anglers have caught Bream along with Hybrids with the most horrendous open sores and ulcerated bodies.
If in fact that there's been a 'fish kill' due to Pollution or water quality how is it that there are no other species affected and we don't find Bream floating, bottoms up. Since the Bream has been on the decline for the last 5 years, not only around Lough Ree and district, it's been nation wide, very similar to the Perch population some 16/18 years ago when most of the Perch vanished, how Strange!
Unfortunate the visiting anglers are on the decline also and nothing has been said by the authorities about this problem, only that there has been a problem. The New Bream that are emerging and hopefully returning to our river and will be doing likewise elsewhere, with the size that 5/6 yr old fish would be at this stage.
Having caught many small fish of this breed over the last few years, it seems to bear out our theory, let's hope so.
Chris and I have thought about going fishing but there's always some excuse, for Now!!
Above are some mad march Hares enjoying the weather and a somewhat confused Bat who decided to land on Frank's roof in the middle of the day (obviously running a little late for halloween).
So we keep taking Pictures waiting for warmer climes.
5th to 11th March
Weather has not been to kind this week with strong cold winds from a Southerly direction.
Never the less Peter was on the scene at swim 32 with a reasonable catch of fish in a few hours, 1 of which was a bream as far as we were concerned.
The following two trips he failed as the water tempeture went down.
Dennis arrived for a few days from England and his first trip to Finnea on the upper Inny was a dissapointment as things weren't to good, finding the river very fast running he failed to catch. Second trip was along side Peter at 33 swim at Tommy Foxe's, 4 nice Hybrids and a few small Perch, Peter only managed 1 Hybrid but captured a picture of one of Dennis's fish.
Chris and I were out with the cameras sat in the car in the warm in between showers but did creep out for an hour and found a few shots worthy of the time spent.
1st - 3rd of March
The weather has been mixed, with fine sunny weather giving way to rain and strong winds.
Spring has arrived and with it have come the invasion of frogs, spawning madly:
Peter has been on one fishing trip
already down at the bog hole and had one perch for his troubles
but icy
rain eventually put him off.
We have however been lucky to have a very clear sky for the lunar eclipse that occured on the night of the 3rd, so out came the cameras and spotting scopes and a long night was spent trying to photograph the moon as it disappeared and reappeared:
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