I have always had an urge to fish for Irish Sea-Trout and in particular some of the waters extensively written about by the late Justice T.C.Kingsmill-Moore in the classic book “A man May Fish”
Top of the list was the waters of the Costello and Fermoyle Fishery, which comprises a series of loughs connected by rivers entering into the sea at Cashla Bay in County Galway.
In recent years the numbers of migratory fish have held their own with approximately 500-1000 salmon and 4000 sea-trout entering the system.
We had booked three days fishing and arranged for a guide who we knew well from fishing Corrib to accompany us.
A few days before we were due to fish we were informed that the fishery was closed due to lack of water and high temperatures. Somewhat disappointed to say the least, our guide, Steve got to work to find a plan B and on the Sunday we booked a boat on Lough Inagh which was not too far away. Things sometimes work out well and on the Saturday, I had a phone call from the Costello fishery manager, Brian Curran to say the weather had improved (for fishing, not going to the beach !) and they would open on the Monday.
We met Steve at the moorings, and we set up our rods. For me, a 10’6’ soft actioned 6 weight, slow intermediate line and a 15 ft 6lb flouro leader with 3 flies 5 ft apart. Standard set-up for these lough’s. We were fishing various traditional Irish sea-trout flies in size 10 and 12.
The loch was stunning, set amongst high Galway mountains and about 4 miles long and ¾ mile wide with a river entering at the top and another leaving at the bottom at the southern end. The weather had improved dramatically overnight and had changed from hot and sunny to wet and windy !
The wind was generally from the south, so we concentrated our drifts in that direction, mainly from a large island towards the river. We saw some good fish leaping which were probably salmon and several swirling on the surface. We had a few small brown trout,but it was apparent that Phil was getting more offers than me and Steve gave me a new fly to put on the top dropper as the main difference between our flies was that Phil had a muddler on top. The new fly was a Frankie McPhillips fly called a Telephone leggy claret booby
I immediately started getting more interest and not long after hooked a good sea-trout, over 2lb. It immediately set off at a rapid speed to my right, lept and carried on at speed. It leapt again going a good 4 ft in the air at speed and threw the hook!. Phil caught a small finnock and I had a small sea-trout of about a pound and a quarter later in the day. I will definitely be back to fish here again in the future.
The following day we met Steve at the fishery office of Costello and Fermoyle and Brian Curran suggested we should fish the first and largest lough in the system, Glennicmurrin Lough. I was pleased with this as this is a lough much written about in “A man may Fish” and has a fishing hut on an island in the centre. This is a complex lough with numerous bays, islands and channels leading to different parts of the lake. T is over 2 miles from top to bottom. Conditions were good with complete cloud cover and a stiff ENE wind. Steve said the wind direction would make drifting along the shores difficult so we would have to make several shorter drifts towards the productive shores. The level was down a couple of feet and hundreds of rocks were exposed in places but it all looked very fishy to me. First drift and I caught a sea-trout of about a pound amongst a few brownies. We ended up with seven sea-trout between us and about twenty brownies. The sea-trout generally hit the fly hard and immediately took to the air whereas the brownies would often swirl at the fly and many were missed.
The following day was much brighter with lighter and very changeable winds generally from the south-west but often changing several times during a drift by as much as 90 degrees. There were definite hot-spots and we would often hook up with a couple of sea-trout and two or three brownies in 50 yards of drift. I even had a double hook-up of sea trout which I have never had before. The Frankie McPhillips fly on the top dropper really made a difference and probably accounted for 50% of the sea-trout and a silver goats-toe variant on the point accounted for a lot of the rest. We ended up with 10 sea-trout that day between us,and whilst none were large, the best being about a pound and a half they fought like demons
I hope to be back in a year or two and will probably go in September with the hot drought conditions we seem to experience now in the summer. Having said that, and yime between June and the end of September can be very productive given a bit of rain. Usually this part of Ireland sees very wet and windy conditions in July and August.
To fish for the salmon and sea trout you will need to purchase a migratory fish licence which at the moment costs 5o euro’s covering all of Ireland for 21 days. These can be bought online or from the fishery office from Brian Curran.
There are numerous accommodation options in the area. We stayed at a B&B in Oughterard which is about a 30 min drive away, but there are much closer options. Full details of the fishing available and some local accommodation can be found on the Ireland West Angling Website.