flies | Game Fishing Ireland

Dave from Waterford Angling is going to fishing in New Zealand later this season so asked me to tie up a few snake flies for him to try on his trip. The first pattern I opted for was a Black Sculpin Helmet. The Helmet should add weight and black is a great colour for browns.

The next pattern will hopefully work for him on the lakes there. It uses White Barred Rabbit, bright braid and has bead chain eyes.

I couldn’t send him off to do any streamer fishing without flies in brown and olive. These are always great colours. I decided not to add weight on these ones so Dave can let his streamer line pull them down. I did add realistic eyes though.

While I had the materials out I got to thinking about these flies and that the big attraction of them to trout has got to be their movement in the water. However, when fishing on stocked lakes these flies can work well fished slowly. In this case what I wanted though was a bit more body to the fly and a splash of colour without taking away any movement. So I came up with this variation. Trials start soon . . . .so watch this space!

Snake Mk II

May

By May the fly fishing season had really taken off. Another trip to Lough Corrib for the Mayfly (although this was a bit patchy) produced some nice trout.

Corrib brace

Fishing Awareness Day took place at Carrigavantry Reservoir. Days like this are really important to get youth into our sport.

A highlight of the day was the entomology workshop by Willie and Martin.

And the Waterford Reservoirs continued to produce quality trout to buzzers.

June

It was a case of more of the same in June with the arrival of:

Good hatches on the Suir and its tributaries.

Grilse and seatrout in the Munster Blackwater.

And Bass (and bass anglers!) in Dungarvan Harbour

July

In July the reservoir trout turned their attention to Caddis.

I took part in the Charity Open Day at Ballyduff Bridge that raised a lot of money for the Crumlin Childrens Hospital.

And helped out a few other associations with casting demonstrations on the Blackwater and Slayney. It was around this time that I decided to establish Game Fishing Ireland as a an independent local business guiding anglers in the area for:

trout