First 10

Tied these up for the salmon fishing forum's monthly fly swap. First 10 of any pattern I've tied up, very good practice. If you don't recognize the pattern its because I made it up. The swaps theme was 'James Bond' so I opted for tying a fly to replicate one of the more mature, classier actresses rather than any of the young one's! Here it is, the Dusty Dench.

Dressing:

Tag: 4 turns of silver oval tinsel.

Tail: Pink antron.

Butt: Peacock herl.

Body: Rear silver UNI Axxel and front black UNI Axxel.

Rib: Silver oval tinsel.

Wing: Grey arctic fox, few strands of silver ice wing, topped off by black arctic fox.

Underwing: Teal feather. 

Head: Black.

Looking forward to seeing the other flies I get in return now!

More coneheads...

Just a few more which will do for high coloured water. If last summers weather is a sign of things to come than I could be using these a lot more often!

And lastly a comparison between little and large; a 15mm brass tube and large conehead beside a size 14 double.

And for anyone who's into their bass fishing, watch out for this festival next summer.

http://www.irishbassfestival.com/

Its run by the lads up at Absolute Fishing in Tramore, Co. Waterford and was held last summer for the first time. Dates for 2013 are 5th-7th of July. To read more about the 250 fish which were caught and the 80cm bass which won the last festival, click here.

Cigarette lighters and super glue...

So I gave the oul conehead tube flies a lash...not quite as simple as a bit of thread and hair on a hook! I must admit to being totally frustrated at the start, with a rotating tube every now and again totally undoing my good work and the thing coming to pieces. Overcoming this obstacle the challenge is to then finish the fly off with a decent head so as to get my size small conehead over it without having any of the thread showing, leaving a neat finish. Well, the first attempt left a lot to be desired so needless to say saved my camera the battery power. However by the 2nd attempt I managed to get the hang of it and with a lot of patience I managed to tie up this green butt park shrimp.

Dressing:
Tube: 15mm brass tube (gold with green butt)
Tail: 1st layer short orange finn raccoon, 2nd layer long yellow finn raccoon, 3rd layer orange finn raccoon and some hot orange ice wing.
Body: Gold uni axxel followed by black mohair.
Rib: Small pearl tinsel.
Wing: Black arctic fox.
Cheeks: JC
Hackle: Yellow and Orange cock hackles.
Cone: Hot orange (large).

I can see this fly doing some damage when the water is well up with some colour. Bought some medium pearl tinsel also and may use this next time to bring it out some more.

A great concept associated with these tubes is the swing tube. Sometimes the hook holding tube at the butt end of the tube can come off and totally put off the movement of the fly. This can waste a lot of fishing time with fiddling about trying to put it back on. The swing tube eliminates this problem.

The public consultation period is currently underway for salmon and sea trout on Irish rivers for 2013. Cork river's are as follows:

Owenacurra 71 Open

Lower Lee 1,830 Open

Bandon 1,162 Open

Ilen 628 Open

Mealagh 192 Open

Coomhola 185 Open

Upper Lee 0 Closed

Glengarriff 127 Open

Argideen 0 Catch and Release

Owvane 399 Open

Adrigole 0 Catch and Release

One encouraging sign is that none of the rivers, bar the upper Lee for special reasons, are closed. Personally I cannot see any benefit to totally closing rivers as it only opens them up to poaching. Anglers are the eyes and ears on the bank and having them there on a C&R basis or keeping one or two for the table is way more beneficial for the river and its fish. 

Bye laws are yet to come out and will come out in due course. This may mean the Bandon being C&R from Feb. 15th until May 12th. We'll wait and see. 

Other river's status and quotas can be seen here. Submissions and appeals can be sent up to the 8th of December. 

Out and about

For the last week now, as autumn turns to winter, you can feel the northerly winds beginning to kick in proper. When out and about you just have to wrap up warm if you want to enjoy the beautiful sights!
Here are some photos of recent outings.

River Bandon estuary at full tide.

Stretches of river upstream of Bandon town.

Not my favourite bird but a cormorant above shot in monochrome. Deep and dark photo, love this mode of shooting with bare tree branches in the background... gives a bit of a halloween feeling! And well, the look in that heron's eye is just plain scary!

A fresh grilse holding station, just off a boulder. As i was looking at a pool he just came into the tail of it, so good timing!

Have been out bass fishing a few times lately, but to no avail. Trying lures to cover all depths of water, one in particular that I have been trying which I bought from Absolute Fishing is the Savage Gear Sandeel. Concentrating on beaches with moderate surf and bouncing them along gullies and beside likely looking areas behind rocks, I'm confident of catching on them soon. The northerly winds are making fishing a bit difficult at the moment as I always feel it just puts fish of any kind off the take. Persistence, and bundles of experience, pays off though, as has proved to be the case for the lads at Absolute Fishing. Picking up 1 or 2 during the northerlies, sport picked up more when the wind switched, including the catch of 1 whopper at 11lbs. For the past week they have also had Henry Gilbey over and you can check out his blog of events along the copper coast here. 

I'll be resuming my fly tying soon, next up will be some conehead tube flies.