Lough Lene is ran by the Lough Lene Anglers Association and they really do a great job looking after the lake, therefore i would also ask everyone , if they intend to fish the lake , to please support the club and buy a day ticket.
I remeber the first day i fished the lake. There was an ITFFA Interprovincial coming up and Lough Lene was the venue. The lake just screams trout habitat. There are rocky shores, sandy shores, reed lined shores. There are also silty areas, deep drop offs and islands. The water has great clarity and is very clean, fly hatches occur all year long and the sport on the lake can be excellent.
But as it was my first time on the lake a friend of mine showed me the areas to concentrate on. We fished hard all day and landed some nice brown trout, as there were no rainbows present in the lake 20 years ago. Our practice paid off and i claimed my second Irish cap the following weekend.
I still fish the same drifts today that i fished way back then and they still produce. But how times have changed, silver bullets now roam free in the lake, some rainbows touching double figures and brown trout in the 6-8lb bracket have been caught. I rarely pull lures or wets on the lake anymore. Its either nymphs or drys for me. Yes you can catch recently stocked fish pulling lures aswell as a few overwintered fish. But you will never match the numbers that can be caught on dry or nymphs when pulling wets when there is a hatch on. And there is a hatch of fly on Lene from the first week in March right through till September.
My first day on the lake this year was really just a chance to give my engine a run. The duckfly wont start properly for 2 weeks. I did look around for fly and eventually found a few here and there but not enough for the fish to feed on them. As it was windy and i forgot my drogue i opted to fish a DI3 sinking line, after a while i started to pick up fish on the DI3 changing to a a fast glass when the wind dropped off. I was fishing slow and deep with hares ear pattern , trying to imitate the corixa and louse the fish feed on. The tick was to change to a di3 when the wind got bad , aiming to fish asdeep and as slow as possible did the without snagging the bottom of the lake
I always have a stomach pump with me and i use it on nearly every fish i catch. Corixa and water louse were on the menu as suspected, not many but enough to determine a pattern to use for the fish.
It was cold and miserable and after about 4 hours i headed in 5 fish to the good and the engine warmed up. It was time for me to warm up too with a hot coffee.
Next week i will most likely head back to Lene in search of the duckfly, its up on Corrib and some other lakes but i am looking for an 8lb plus silver bullet from Lene this year.. Oh and did i mention the snails, those lovely snails, i cannot wait for them to appear.. Theres lots of fishing ahead of me this year with various competitions to fish and different lakes to explore.
Until next time tight lines and enjoy your fishing
Dylan Olin
18.08.2020 10:32
Great stuff Dennis
Richard Hunter
03.04.2019 18:27
Great Blog Denis, very enjoyable and informative read.
Deirdre Sweeney
30.03.2019 20:01
Sounds like an excellent day except for the weather, tightlines with the duck fly...time for me dig out my rod x
Dinger
30.03.2019 19:53
Brilliant read Denis , keep it going and best of luck
Latest comments
19.05 | 05:47
Hi Denis
Good meeting last night, and enjoyed reading your blog. Felt I was on the lake with you. Great work
02.05 | 20:42
Hi Dennis loved the article straight to the point .just wondered will the trout feed on the small buzzers all year ?
06.04 | 11:57
Cant wait to read this
01.03 | 03:03
glad u enjoy, ty, will be back when the fishing returns
AND SO IT BEGINS.
After fishing from the bank all winter long, I was looking forward to getting back in the boat. Normally I would wait for the first hatch of the year and travel down to the west of Ireland or not go at all until the Duckfly appears in the midlands. But after not fishing for 3 weeks I was starting to loose the plot. So with limited time I opted for Lough Owel and maybe chance to see the first hatch of the year, which is a small buzzer about half the size of the Duckfly which hatches just before the Duckfly itself. The weather looked good enough in the days before my trip, but as always the weather turned. A South wind but 19 to 24km which isn’t really what I was hoping for.
Arriving early at Lough Owel I was greeted with a bare pin ripple on the lee shoreline and a balmy 10c, but as I fitted the boat out I could feel the breeze building. Two 10ft ever reliable 7 weight RS Wychwood Competition rods were both adorned with floating lines, a straight buzzer set up on one and a bung on the other.
As I travelled down the lake it was lovely to hear the hum of my 15hp Johnson, I checked every bay and reed bed but more in hope, for any sign of buzzer. The wind was picking up all the time and after an hour or so I resigned myself to defeat and out came the di3. Fishing at this time of year in my opinion is normally shallow for hoglouse and snail feeders, whilst drifting in 10 to 20 ft of water you would be after fry feeders on the drop off with di5s and di7s depending on the wind.
The greater the wind the heavier the sinking line. At this stage I had travelled as far as the cornfield and I drifted off the shelf in nice conditions pulling dabblers and fry patterns. A three fly 16ft cast of 8lb strong leader, 6ft to first fly and then 5ft between with flys .
Just coming off the shelf I got my first fish, a lovely marked but thin overwintered Triploid Brown of about 2lb. Working up the shoreline to the neck I got two more on Black Dabblers and a big white Hummungous.
Stomach pumping the fish is a must when fishing in my opinion, you don’t need to go mad emptying the fishes stomach, a brief pump will tell you what the fish are on. In this case snail and hoglouse were high on the menu.
HE WHO DARES WINS....
I worked along the lee shorelines as it was getting very blustery picking up a fish here and there. I changed flys a few times, but it seemed whatever I put on the top dropper the fish took. The top dropper is the first fly the fish sees as you pull it by him, typical early season fishing. All fish were in the 1.5lb to 2.5lb bracket. Its been years since I fished Owel on a regular basis, so this year I have decided to fish it a lot more and re-learn the lake. With this in mind, I kept moving, instead of repeating drifts.
About lunch time I decided to head to deep water and see if I could contact some of the larger trout Lough Owel has know become known for.
I put up the di-5, but after one drift I felt I was not staying in contact with the line or getting deep enough due to the wind. So the dreaded di-7 was taken out of the box and the cobwebs blown off it. It took me 5 or so minutes to get the feel for the line as I hadn’t fished it from a boat in what seemed like an age.
But sure enough 10 minutes later after a count to 35, followed by a long slow retrieve the first marker went through the rod rings and I hung the flys, I thought I got slight knock, I waited and waited, nothing, continuing my long slow retrieve I barely got three more long pulls before the rod hooped over and the tip of the rod buried into the lake as line peeled off the floor then off the reel. Playing a fish alone out in the middle of the lake on a blustery day will certainly get your heart thumping. Anything and everything can go wrong , so that’s why I keep a tidy boat( stop laughing) when fishing alone. Regaining half the line onto the reel, I began to drag the fish from the depths. At times it just hung beneath the boat and there was nothing I could do. The wind was pushing the boat along too quickly.
Eventually the fish came to the surface and at over 4lb I was gobsmacked and puzzled at its strength. Lying on its side one second, then it vanished, the penny dropped, I had two on. Now it got messy, eventually I guided the first one into the net, unhooked it, then netted the fish on the tail fly with the first fish in the net. The tail fish was about 3.5lb and the fish on the top dropper was over 4lb, they certainly stretch the di7. Both released back to their watery homes, after a little rest in my net.
I fished all the way back to the moorings, catching an odd fish and I had another double hook up of newly introduced fish but it was pleasant. Just as I packed up the redundant Bung Rod, a fish rose in front of me. As a wise man once said “never pass up a willing fish”. Out with the di- 3 and 3 casts later the line went tight, fish number 13 was landed. Enough was enough and in I went.
Lough Owel was kind to me on a not so kind day. It was great to be back out on the lake and I hope to be back out again next week, hopefully there will be Duckfly !!!. But knowing my luck , the wind will be howling and the rain will be coming down sideways.
But as Anglers we Live in Hope.