August 2013 was a good month for salmon fishing with 75 fish landed in total.

At the beginning of August there were still good numbers of fresh fish entering the system. In the first three days of the month we landed 15 fish, 8 from the River and 7 from Finlough. The Mills and Beattie family accounted for five of these and of course the old maestro John Mills had the biggest, a fine fish of 12lbs4.5ozs off Finlough. David Dunne, Liam Dunne, John Scanlan, Martin Stokes and Derek Strauss. Gian Piero from Guatemala and Bobby Chinn from USA also landed their first ever salmon.

In week 32 we had some serious anglers aboard with the O’Dwyer party, the Beattie family, the Ganly party, John Mills and that dynamic duo from Switzerland Urs Leibundgut and Markus Merz. Conditions were not ideal as it was relatively calm and water was lowish. There were still 15 fish landed, 6 off the River, 7 off Fin and 2 off Doo. The Mills/ Beattie family accounted for 4, William Hamilton a fine 10lbs fish off Doo, Ganly party 2, Urs and Markus 7 and even though not the biggest Howell Ferguson’s from USA first ever salmon of 10lbs4.5ozs off Doo on a 6wt rod must go down as fish of the week.

Week 33 proved excellent with 21 fish landed, 9 off the River and 12 off Fin. The dynamic Swiss duo of Urs and Markus had 13 of the 21 fish, 10 off Fin and 3 off the River. Markus who had never landed a double figure fish before managed to land 2 of 10lbs+. Urs had the fish of the week a cracking fish of 12lbs14ozs off Fin on a Willie Gunn. Others to land fish this week included Dominic McAtamney, Foster Swetenham, Alexander Mills, Mike Shortt, Pat Cassidy, Myles Kelly and Mark Corps.

Week 34 delivered 15 fish although with a good flood in the middle of the week one might have expected more. The River had 8, Finlough 5 and Doo 2. The Brennan party of Hugh Brennan and Peter Morris had 4, Rothkotter party had 4, Brendan Keenen had 2, David Hugh Smith had 2 and Steve Jones and Ian Edgar had 1 each. David Keane from Limerick also managed to land his first ever salmon, a fish of 4lbs off Doolough on a Bibio stimulator.

The final week of the month was much quieter with only 9 fish landed, the best of which were Freddie Jago’s of 4lbs6ozs, Denis Daly’s of 8lbs5ozs and one of Canada’s top outdoor tv celebrity hosts Henry Waszczuk of 8lbs3ozs. Salmon for the most part were playing very hard to get.

That brings our total salmon catch for the year to date to 341. D.McEvoy