Summer Grilse and Bass

Well haven't updated this in ages as moved house recently and we didn't have broadband for a while but all is sorted now. To go with the lack of broadband I did also have a lack of fish which I have now thankfully put right! For the last month and a half I have stuck to the Bandon river and over that time the runs are slowly getting stronger. Low water dominated the end of May and start of June making fishing difficult. I hooked and lost one salmon on the last day of May on the fly that shook the hook after vigorous head shaking  and I lost a belter of a sea trout that came unstuck after 5 or so minutes of electric runs and jumping. Moving on from these 2 fish the river then experienced 3 rises in water in quick succession. During this period the bad luck continued and I lost a further 7 salmon, 4 on fly and 3 spinning. 2 of the fish on the fly I was into for over 10 minutes and they still managed to shake the hook, be it a Salar or Ken Sawada double. One mistake I did make was, after losing a fly, attaching a treble to my conehead that wasn't fit for the high water. These are the Partridge X3BL that I use for my swing tubes and now sea trout fishing. They weren't up to the challenge and the fish I hooked bent 2 out of the 3 hooks. A couple of these hooks have also broken off rocks before so now I am sticking to the Partridge BMD Big Mouth Double hooks for high water fly fishing with tubes which look the job.
Getting over that the last 2 days of the month came good and I landed 2 fresh grilse over a weekend and another one at the start of July. I retained 2 fish and left the other go to continue its journey.

The above fish were 3 and 3.5lbs respectively. As you can see they are well made fish, solid and bulky. No need for the big spinning rod in this water, I had great fun on my bass lure rod, the Graphiteleader Argento RV. Fishing in the middle of the afternoon with the sun beaming down still didn't stop these fish from taking, just stepping down the gear and the size of flying c to a size 2 did the business. One fish I caught on worm was great fun as I could see all the action of the take unfold in front of me. Casting out a bait of 3 worms the grilse kept on coming over and nudging the worms. Once the fish even took it in its mouth and spat it back out! Holding the nerve and not striking when I felt these very short runs, I decided to take the worms off and put on one small worm. 1st cast over the fish and whack the fish took the worm, very exhilarating fishing when you have such clear water and it proves again you don't need to be wasting your worms by putting 3 and 4 on together all the time!

On the bass front, I have only been out once to a west cork mark that has produced in the past. This time it didn't fail to produce either. The 1st hour of the push was tough going with all the suspended weed, 1 in 10 casts coming back with a clean lure. Even the weedless weightless soft plastic were picking it up. But perseverance paid off in the end and I managed to pick up this fish around the 3lb mark.

To end this blog, on the Bandon a couple of weeks ago I witnessed a huge migration of elvers (juvenile eels) heading up river. These haven't been seen in years and it was great to be lucky enough to see it. Looking closely, right at the edge of the bank, you could see them swimming up in their hundreds and a friend of mine, a good few miles up river, was watching them at the same time, which gives a picture of the sheer volume of elvers going up that day.

Next blog I will put up a report from the Irish Bass Festival, a savage weekend all round.