I fish quite a bit with a guide in south Kerry called John Quinlan (pictured with me on the left) . He runs fishing holidays with his partner Lynn at Thatch Cottage. He guides for all sorts of species from salmon and trout in rivers and lakes to mullet, pollock and of course bass in the sea. Fly fishing is his thing and he has helped me catch plenty of those wiley Kerry fish over the years. I will post more about the sea fishing in another post but I am more concerned today with telling you about a recent trip we had on my favorite Kerry lake called Namona.
John, my brother and I headed out early in the morning full of misplaced optimism which is always the case! We never seem to learn and always think that this is going to be the day when we catch trout after trout and salmon after salmon!
We fished for salmon for a while at the point where the river drains into the lough and although the conditions were good we didnt have a touch. We changed tack and went after the brown trout and sea trout that abound in the lake. The brownies are never big fish in these lakes due to the acidity of the water. There simply isnt the same level of insects that live in the limestone lakes of the west so these little trout are always hungry and therefore in theory easier to catch!
We met a few brownies and some small sea trout and fished on untill we had enough for lunch. We usually break for lunch and barbecue the mornings catch on the lakeshore washed down with plenty of tea. I am not sure if it is the beauty of the scencery, the fact that we are enevitably starving after our morning's efforts or just the plain fact that the fish are super fresh but they taste superb.
No fancy preperation here. We simply gut the fishing, wash them out in the lake itself and stick them on the barbecue for 10 mins or so. We eat them with our fingers on homemade bread and then sit back with a mug of tea that was brewed in the kelly kettle and admire the view while lunch is digested. It has been known for us to fall asleep in the heather and wake up an hour later cursing that we have missed the best of the fishing but I suppose thats all part of it.
In the afternoon we met several more trout and landed a fair few of them. At one point John spotted a White-tailed Sea Eagle soaring up above the lake. We must have watched it for ten minutes and it didnt beat it's wings once. It just used the thermal wind current to get higher and higher into the sky. It really was a wonderful thing to see and made the day for us. Unfortunatly I have heard since that the eagle was killed by someone who laid poison on meat.
We fished on untill dusk and picked up a few more fish, nothing spectacular but a great day was had by all.
No comments:
Post a Comment