What a day,

The recent poor day on Sillan had one some good sides, we had stacks of bait left and were
both dying to get back out to actually catch something. A day on the river was called for so we set off
for The Barrow, with a plan for Rob to fish the pole and I was on the stick. Fishing this way meant we could change over at some stage if we wanted to. We had a look beside the supermarket but between, the cars, the noise and the filth we decided against it and headed for "The Lawn". After getting set up it wasn't long before Rob was in to some quality roach. A 12grm Sensas Flat Float went through the swim quite well and with a size 16 Drennan Silverfish Hook everything appeared to be spot on.
He had an early burst of roach, then the dace took over. An introduction of Groundbait seemed to bring the roach back and he started getting them again.

I was down stream and running a Drennan Stick Float, feeding loose  mags and caster and after 20 odd mins started getting bites, a mix of roach and dace and some great dace to be fair. With the flow going left to right and a strengthening wind going the other way, line control was easy and things were lookng good.

23 fish on the stick

After an hour and a half Rob went to get the breakfast and I jumped on his box for a few put ins on the pole. By now the wind was really making things difficult, hanging on to his pole was just not good and there was a real danger of something getting busted so we decided to pack up and look for somewhere a bit more sheltered.

22 fish on the pole

We had a look at the "Swimming Pool" but that was wide open and too windy so we moved back to where we initially looked at the Supermarket. We decided to leave the pole in the car and just set the float gear up again, the next couple of hours was just cracking. One rod between us, cracking sport.
We were up and running quite quickly, using the same set up from earlier. A couple of run throughs to re check the depth and after a couple of adjustments we were ready.

Robs turn...........

I started and after a few fish we agreed that after each one of us had 5 in the net we'd swop. Quite quickly we had 25 in the net and we set a target off 55 fish which would give us 100 for the day. Loose fed mags and caster seemed to bring dace and like earlier introducing groundbait seemed to bring roach. At about 4.30 and with the light fading we were on 50, 5 more to bag and it was my turn on the rod. We were chatting to a local lad about various swims in the area and as I cast out before I knew what had happened there was line everywhere, a real birds nest. Cut the line in a hurry, Rob pulled the float back in by hand and I re threaded the rod. It's almost dark at this stage I can hardly see what I'm doing but a few minutes later and we're not going home till we have the 100. The last few casts had Team Kavo working together,  from where we were sitting the street lights that illuminated the bridge meant after a small run of the float I couldn't see it in the reflection on the water. Theres always a way round these things and Rob moved 10 yards down the bank where the reflection wasn't an issue. So I cast and he called it, as soon as he said "Strike" I did and 10 minutes later we netted
fish number 100. A fabulous days pleasure fishing came to an end with two happy anglers grinning
from ear to ear. The drive home flew by as we were in flying form, so good that Rob actually stayed awake all the way home, another first.

55 glorious Barrow Roach and Dace

Lovely Jubbly

Why do we do it ?

Over the weekend just gone we had  a session on the feeders on Sillan. Rob had picked up a cracking feeder rodover the Christmas and was dying to try it out. A Drennan Stillwater 11/12.5ft specifically for targeting roach and skimmers. We set up initially on the first couple of swims on the match stretch and got to it quite quickly. After some recent talk over the net regarding Wagglers I elected to fish a fixed one at about 20 yards into about 7 foot of water. After a couple of biteless hours it was obvious it wasn't going to happen for us so we packed up.
On the way back to the car we decided to have a bit of time off the Jetty with just the feeder gear and reckoned if we had nothing after 30 mins or so we'd call it a day. You guessed it we had nothing.
I gt a chance to try out Robs new Rod and it really is a lovely bit of kit. I gave it an hour and although I was enjoying the rod, with not so much as a sucked maggot we called it a day and headed for home.

A dissapointing few hours reminded us to pay more attention to conditions and local knowledge and though we assured ourselves that we would, yeah right..................

It's not always about catching, beautiful....

Hands Up

Tarts !!!!

After last weeks try at stick float fishing we were both keen to give it another try. So after a few PM's on fishingtalkireland.com and a very high river we decided on a new venue for us, B'town.
I had it in my head that I wanted to fish a feeder on the river, Rob was going all out on the stick.
The poles were left at home, it was going to be a rods only day, or so we thought.
Our good friend and all round nut job Gary Kearney joined us for the day.
Arrived at 08.00 and after a call to check where we should be, we initially set up at the end of the canalised stretch just before the lock and opposite a weir. It's quite wide so I decided to stick with my plan of fishing the feeder and went about getting set up. Rob and Gary were both fishing floats, Rob on a Drennan Stick Float and Gary on just about every different float you can imagine.

Rob was off and running and had a good roach quite quickly, I then had a couple on the feeder and all's looking promising. Almost out of nowhere theres a wind blowing back up the canal and the two lads on the float can't get anything like decent presentation. A hard flow right to left and a hard wind left to right, all went very quiet. We had a quick chat and moved back up the canal towards the town.
A few hundred yards and it's all very different, nice and sheltered with a constant, surprisingly fast tow.

All nice and comfy

I had chucked a 7Mtr whip in the car and I decided to set that up rather than the feeder. This led me to another small prob in that I had only brought relatively light rigs with me, 1.5grm was just way off the mark for what was needed but I figured I'd give it a go. A 1grm Olivette and 4 droppers were more often than not bunched against the hooklength knot in an attempt to get the hook down. It worked to some degree in so far as the fish counter said 33 when we packed up. The two lads weren't geting a lot but stuck at it, or went to the shop or "had a go" on my box.

Baggin !!!!

I was definitely getting more bites the more I fed, so each run through was accompanied by at least two pults of either mags or hemp. Dace, dace and more dace, lots of missed bites and lots of

Grrrrrrs and Aaggghhhhhhs but on what was a very pleasant day weatherwise, I wouldnt have been anywhere else.

Robs turn !!!!

So, a pleasant enough day doing what we love but just not doing it very well. At least we know whats required next time and there will be a next time.

I can hear my old Headmaster, "could do better"

Old dog, new tricks.................

Last week saw us back around The Barrow at our usual spots, armed and ready for a go on one of the canal stretches, we were quickly in a spot of bother. Our first choice was the same spot as my last blog
and after the three of us had nothing after an hour or so a move was on the cards.

I had a quick look at a similar venue but decided against it, as we had nothing like enough bait for three of us to fish it. Stephen headed for home, which might have been the right idea and as we packed up we were glad we did. I've seen some things in my swim over the years but ..............

Myself and Rob had bumped into Gavin (the Ireland junior team manager) and Damien
earlier that morning and we knew they were fishing the main river in the town so we decided to pack up and go see how they did it.
Up to the town and we found them no problem, all on the pole and using 20grm Cralusso floats !!!!
Not being equipped with anything of that size we had a chat for a while and picked up a few pointers.
Now it's difficult to watch others and not have a go so back to the car out with the float rod and on with a stick float. The biggest I had actually have, is a few Drennan Big Sticks at 2.25grm.
I was quite sure that it wasn't really heavy enough but we said we'd give it an hour, and we did.

It took us a while to get things sorted but we did
eventually and got into a few roach. It took quite a few runs through the swim to figure the best
shotting pattern and position but we got something right and started getting a few bites.

The lads fishing pole tactics were down to our right and catching a few at 13mtrs so we kept at about that distance ourselves. Regular loose feeding of mags and or hemp brought a few fish one after the other and we thought we had it cracked. You'd think we'd know by know !!!

It had taken us about 30 mins to start getting bites, then we had 4 or 5 one after the other, then it more or less died on us. We kept making adjustments and winkled out the odd fish but for whatever reason it wasn't really happening.  Despite the odd shower and a biting cold wind we had really enjoyed
our first real attempt at stick float fishing on a "proper" river. It's safe to say we'll have another
go or two at that, nice.