Bandon Opening Day

The River Bandon opened on Friday the 15th of February with perfect water, hovering around the 0.3m mark on the gauge in Bandon and dropping slowly. I managed to get out for a couple of hours in the afternoon and caught 3 kelts, losing another. The condition of the kelts is exceptional. A possible reason for this is they are late running fish which have recently spawned and so have not spent long in fresh water. This has also been echoed on the Blackwater, aswell as other rivers. Below is a quick photo I took of the first kelt before release.

As you can see its pure silver with no sign of any disease or ragged fins. The gills were also very red in colour, although I didn't check for maggots. The other 2 were also in pristine condition. Many old fish were caught by other fisherman who ventured out, alas no sign of a fresh fish. February is always going to be the toughest month of the year, but no doubt some are running so there is always a chance.

Set up for the day was my Bill Drury Multi Tip Spey line, to which I attached a Guideline DDC Connect Multi Tip S6/S7,  short 4 foot leader and 3 inch Monkey fly tied on a 15mm aluminium bottle tube. This set up allowed me to get my fly as deep as I wanted by throwing in upstream mends and some slack line as soon as it landed on the water. I'm confident that if there had been any fresh fish around my fly would have been sufficiently deep enough to scratch them on the nose!