March 2013 is a very difficult month to sum up from any perspective, not alone an angling one. The weather plays a vital role in this as angling and weather go hand in hand.
To say our weather has been a bit unusual is an understatement. A lot of people around the area would say it’s good for nothing, except drying turf. We have been under the influence of an Easterly airflow since about mid February. This normally brings hard dry weather which is exactly what happened. Even when we did get rain it was still extremely cold.
Just a few weather related figures. Rainfall for the month was 129.6mms or 5.1” is well below normal. Our maximum temp was 12.6 degrees C compared to 20.1 last year.Lowest grass min. was -6 compared to -2.6 last year. More importantly from an angling perspective our highest water temp. this year was 7.5 compared to 12.5 last year. Lowest this year was 3.9 compared to 6.5 last year.
These factors do not add up to what one would classify as ideal fishing conditions. Having said that we did manage to land 16 fish for the month which given the conditions is not bad.
The first week of March was taken by a group of German guests, who despite extremely difficult conditions tried hard all week, but without any success.
The second week we had another group of Germans led by Taki Alvanos , who again were very unlucky with conditions. We did get some rain towards the end of the week and they were duly rewarded when Herman Josef Striken landed a fish of approx. 7.5lbs in Morrisons pool on the 15th on a Black and Red tube.
Conor O Leary and Brian O’ Donohoe managed to land two beauties on Saturday the 16th, 12lbs and 8lbs15ozs respectively, from the Rock and Morrisons.
The third week we had a Swedish – Anglo group who despite arctic weather conditions did have some water and this was reflected in the catches. They had 7 sea liced fish for the week, 4 off the river and 3 off Fin. The lucky anglers were Arne Forsgren 2, Thomas Dehlin 2 and Hasse Dehlin, Simon Calcutt and Thomas Almer had 1 each.
The final week of March we group of enthusiastic German anglers which included some teenagers who were searching for that elusive first ever. Water levels were excellent to begin and dropped off towards the end of the week. There were 6 fish landed for the week including 2 first evers. The first was Max Dittrich who had a fish of 7lbs12ozs on a Collie Dog from the Kings pool and the second was taken by Constantine Schmittmann of 7lbs12ozs from the Rock pool on a Willie Gunn. Well done to them on their achievement.
By the end of March water levels were again at rock bottom and we are still waiting to return to our normal weather patterns from the Atlantic. D.McEvoy