An ireland fishing adventure

My wife and I spent the past 8 days in Europe for our fifth anniversary.  We spent the first 4 days in Paris doing the tourist thing, then flew into Ireland for some pub crawling and sightseeing.  I was able to slip away for about 5 hours one morning to do a little fly fishing for trout in one of the local trout Irish streams.







 This has been a dream of mine for a very long time, so this was a rather rewarding fishing trip.  I packed my 4wt with a double taper and a box of buggy nymphs with a couple of small streamers, along with some basic nymphs and dries.




 

 

 


 

The stream was small and brushy and casting was going to be tough but it looked like it opened into some good pools in the section I could see from the bridge access.  As I waded into the pool below the bridge I saw 3 wakes move out of the head of the riffle into an undercut bank.  I heard that the fish over there could be tough to catch but that didn't seem to be true on this morning. I caught a lot of trout, mostly around 5-10 inches long and they were all over the place.

 




This little creek was beautiful (much like the rest of Ireland), so I was driven to cover ground and quickly took off the prince nymph and tied on a wooly bugger and did my best to roll cast it to every good looking cut, riffle drop, and stripped it in the deepest parts of the pools.  I also stripped a streamer in some of the better pools.   This worked just as good as the smaller nymphs and I hooked two better fish that were in the 12-14 inch range.  It was a hell of a good time, can't wait to do it again someday.



 

First road trip of the year

Man what a trip this turned out to be.  Great water levels made for some great fishing and paddling. Everyone caught great numbers and fish over 16" were common. These streams tend to have more ledges and quick drops than others that I have paddled in the ozarks, and it made for some great quick water runs. It felt great to get outside and enjoy some of the incredible places I have found in the ozarks. Pictures turned out pretty good too!





 

 

Giving back

Every year I make a trip over to southeast Missouri with my wife to meet a group of friends for our annual stream team cleanup.  Some friends from the Missouri smallmouth alliance meet for some floating and fishing, and and we cleanup a good chunk of river and have some great times around a campfire.  This year was one of the best so far in terms of turnout, and we picked up around 1000lbs of trash along 25 tires. The company was great and it is always nice to get a group of good friends together. It can be somewhat depressing to see what people are willing to chuck in the river.  The amount of oil and grease buckets, aerosol cans, paint, and stryfoam that we find makes me sick.   If these people could only realize the resources they have surrounding them. 

Anyways, the weather was crazy.  It was snowing when I left on Thursday afternoon. It would be nearly 75 degrees by the following afternoon.  Caught fish in the snow, but went fishless on a 75 degree afternoon on a much better stream.  Still great to be out in the weather, and giving back to mother nature will surely benefit me in the long run.  Here are some of the better pictures.

Creekin

Throughout my life I have found some incredible places while looking for good fishing holes. This creek is one of those places.  It is a hard place to plan a at trip because it can be incredibly flashy and is dangerous at high levels, but within a couple of days it will be back to base flows.  Giant bluffs rise more than a hundred feet at bends in the river and wildlife is abundant.  In the summer time it can be great fishing, but most of the fish move out of the creek in the wintertime.  Anyways...the pictures turned out to be pretty good, and looking back on them makes me wish it was April.   Several bald eagles were grouped up during this trip, and at one point I floated directly underneath one in a tree about 30 feet over my head. 




Enjoy.