Well our Mediterranean style weather has well and truly left us for the moment and we have returned to our more normal Atlantic weather patterns. Bearing this in mind we have had excellent fishing conditions for the most part and the grilse run has started, but slowly as of yet. Hopefully it’s just a case that they haven’t arrived in any big numbers yet.

We have landed twelve fish here since my last update, most of them grilse. Werner was first on the mark with a nice grilse of 3lbs from the Rock Pool on a Banana fly on the 1^st. Reinhard had a good fish the same day off Finlough of 5lbs5ozs on a Collie Dog.

Fish of the month so far was caught the following day by Benny Weltz who landed a beautiful sea liced fish of 8lbs9ozs from the Quarry Pool on a Cascade. It was indeed well deserved as Benny had fished hard all week and was duly rewarded.

Week 27 was as usual a very multinational week with anglers from Northern Ireland, England, USA, Ireland, Germany and Italy. Although they didn’t win the soccer it was Italy who took top honours here with Giovanni Mazzoleni landing four for his week. In fairness he did put in the hours. His first was on Sunday from the Whin Pool of 4lbs on a Cascade. He had two on Monday, one of 3lbs12ozs from the Schoolhouse on a Cascade and one of approx. 6.5lbs from the Rock Pool on a Collie Dog. His fourth fish came on Thursday again from the Schoolhouse of 3lbs7ozs on a Collie Dog.

Vicky Chandler who was fishing with Brian Fisher also deserves great praise as she landed her first ever salmon on Monday from the Meadow Pool of approx. 4lbs on a Delphi Collie.

Jack Gillispie had a fish from the Schoolhouse on Tuesday morning of 4lbs3ozs on a Cascade. Not to be outdone by his father, son Sam landed one on Doolough of approx. 7lbs, the next day. Raoul de Waha also had one the same day from the Deadman’s of 4lbs10ozs on a Collie Dog. Finally Mark Corps had one from the Meadow Pool yesterday of 3lbs8ozs on a Cascade variant.

Even though the salmon are slow yet the signs for the sea trout are very encouraging so far this year with some lovely trout landed and all in excellent condition. This just happens to coincide with low lice levels in Killary this year, which was not the case last year. Hopefully the good run of sea trout will continue and we should see bigger numbers of grilse returning in the next couple of weeks. There is definitely plenty of water with the river running at 65 this morning.

D.McEvoy