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.