The highlight of the salmon fishing this week was definitely Urs Leibundgut’s 400th Delphi salmon. This is without doubt a truly incredible feat and just reward for the many hours of perseverance and hard fishing. I suppose it must be said that there is a certain amount skill involved also!! Needless to say there was a glass of celebratory champagne which had been on ice for a couple of months!

The fish weighed in at 6lbs1oz and was taken in the Turn Pool on his own Neighbours Cat Nymph. His fishing partner Markus did make the comment that at this stage the Neighbours Cat must be bald. All I can say on my own behalf is “Well Done Urs” and it is well deserved. It may be a while before anyone else reaches the 400 mark.

Overall our salmon angling this past week has been difficult. We got none of the rain that flooded many parts of the east coast which is highly unusual for us. As a result the river only rose above 0 for a few hours this morning. Other than that it varied between 0 and -5.

We did however manage to land eight fish for the week, seven from the river and one off Finlough.

Gareth Beattie was first off the mark with a fish from the Turn pool last Monday of 4lbs10ozs on a Yellow Gary. Shortly afterwards Mario Renggli from Switzerland managed to land his first ever salmon. Amazingly it was a sea liced fish from the Whin pool that weighed in at 2lbs10.5ozs and was taken on a Blue Charm.

On Tuesday Markus Merz had a fish of 7lbs from the Stream on Finlough on a Tummel shrimp. Wednesday Urs landed his 400th. On Thursday Gareth Beattie landed his second of the week, a relatively fresh fish of 5lbs3ozs from the Whin pool on a Blue Charm. On Friday Oliver Ross had a fish of 4lbs6ozs from the Turn pool on a Willie Gunn. Shortly after Gareth Beattie landed his third of the week, again from the Whin pool of 4lbs14 on a Cascade.

Finally yesterday Daire O’Neill had his first ever salmon. The fish weighed in at 4lbs4ozs and was taken in the Turn pool on a Beaded Bone fishing fly.

Again I say in hope that we may get some broken weather in the early days of this week, with a good deluge of rain which we badly need. If it comes I would expect the salmon fishing to pick up.

On a more positive note our sea trout fishing was excellent, with 130 landed for the week. The majority of these were taken on Doolough and Glencullin on traditional sea trout patterns. Again most of these were from three quarters to one pound but there were some bigger fish also up to 2.5lbs. It must be said that all were in excellent condition.

There is plenty of availability for sea trout fishing, so for anyone that is interested just contact us. D.McEvoy