To say our weather has been changeable since my last update would be a slight understatement. As usual Paddy’s Day was pretty normal, with almost 60mms of rain and a good wind off the Atlantic to go with it. Many of the parades locally were cancelled due to the inclement weather. The river rose to 100 and this made fishing difficult. When the persistent rain abated we experienced much colder temperatures with the mountain tops once again being covered in snow. Then from last Thursday on we experienced some beautiful spring sunshine with highs of 18.5 degrees C.

As our anglers last week were from Sweden, who were well used to the inclement weather that we experienced at the beginning of last week. It must be said that their perseverance and skill were duly rewarded with a couple of fish on the bank. There were also a few lost. Hasse Dehlin a very experienced angler managed to hook a fish in the Whin Pool with the gauge at 95 (which was a feat in itself) but the fish came off. The wily old Arne Forsgren was the first to land a fish. He had one of 7lbs9ozs in the Meadow Pool on the 21st on a Sunrae Shadow. Then the following day Lars Markgren who had lost a fish two days previously due to the lack of a landing net caught a fish of 7lbs6ozs on a Delphi Collie, again in the Meadow Pool.

Since then there were fish seen and risen, despite some truly magnificent weather. From Saturday we were then joined by quite a multinational grouping of experienced anglers from Sweden, Germany, the USA and Austria. However, it was the most inexperienced, young Michael Fehringer from Austria who showed the experts how to do it. On his first day’s salmon fishing Michael landed a beautiful fish of 10lbs12ozs in the Waterfall Pool yesterday evening on a Casacde. Michael was delighted and proudly displayed his first ever salmon to all our guests. Well done Michael and I’m sure he got some excellent advice from Walter.

At this point in time our water is running at 30 and it looks like the short spell of Mediterranean weather is coming to an end, with some rain due tomorrow, which should top the system up again. We have some cloud cover this afternoon so I’d be hoping for some activity. It’s hard to believe that we’re nearly in April already. Where does the time go?? D.McEvoy