Good morning from a stuck in the middle of a high pressure Foxford. It has been dry and cool but overall gloomy for the past week. We have a permanent haze over us that is blocking out the light, i’d nearly prefer the rain with the occasional glimpse of sun. We have managed to get a bit of fishing done and the Pike season has started well for us. More about that in the future. I got more emails than I was expecting in response to last weeks post but at least I didn’t have the Russians trying to sell me a tank, so we will keep going like that. If you want to comment on a post just send an email to me mtiern@gmail.com . This weeks blog is a little reminiscence, i’m actually smiling here. I was in the shop one day in September, two anglers got chatting and one said he likes the blog, the other turned around and said “I like the winter blogs, that’s when he gets all Philosophical”, I’m sure it was a compliment Paul 😂

In last weeks blog I gave a short account of two days on Lough Conn. As always is the case, these things spark memories, start conversations, and raise debate. One such conversation took place between myself and another former Lough Conn Boatman. We were both boating on the Loughs from the mid 80s and would often have groups from the same hotel. At that time there were two hotels in Pontoon servicing the many visiting angler who came annually to fish. We sat for an hour and reminisced on those times and how things have changed.

The Pontoon Bridge Hotel and Healys hotel were in full swing and from April to September they were heaving with excited anglers. We along with other boatmen brought them out daily to try their luck. Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors (Good morning Rob),Brick layers, you name it we had them in our boats. Most of them were occasional anglers and were here for the craic, of which there was plenty. For them it was a holiday and they were happy enough to be here and relax. A good majority of the time was spent in the hotel bar talking about fishing or with our Kelly Kettles brewing tea on an island talking about fishing. There was a lot more talk about fishing than there was fishing. They were good times and we learned a lot from being in their company, the poor mans university.

Traditional lough style

We can look back with rose tinted glasses and think that these were simpler times and fish were free rising and plentiful. In reality, this was not the case and I, working as a boatman had many difficult days when fish were not freely rising and my poorly equipped and often unskilled anglers struggled to catch fish. It is fair to say that at that time we were set in our ways and practiced the traditional Lough style fly fishing that we had grown up doing. A drifting boat with two anglers and a boatman. The boatman in the center on the oars and the anglers, one seated at the bow and one at the stern casting short lines. A short retrieve lifting the rod slowly to dibble the bob fly in the surface for a few seconds before re casting. This was the traditional Lough style as practiced on the Great western loughs. It worked and  is still a good method today and there are times when conditions suit and fish are feeding on the surface that it works well. However, we have advanced and now practice different styles of fly fishing using modern rods, reels, lines, leaders and flies. Most of these advances came from the days with those visiting anglers.

Change came

I said that most of the anglers who visited were occasional anglers and were here for the craic and that was true, however there were some who were seasoned anglers and some who were better anglers that the men guiding them. These guys were well traveled sportsmen who brought new ideas, new materials, and new thinking to the Western Loughs. Reservoir fishing was big in the UK and the nice guys in the tackle trade were taking full advantage. New rods were been developed along with better reels and a larger array of line densities than we could ever have imagined. Most of this equipment had not made its way to the west of Ireland and it was these visiting anglers who introduced us to it all.

Flies

Probably the biggest change that came in those years was our thinking on fly patterns and how we fish them. I can still remember some of the older boatmen and their attitude towards dry fly fishing. It was basically a “Dark Art” practiced by river fishermen and it would not work on the Loughs. How quickly that changed when we put some Permafloat on a fan wing Mayfly. The Fanwing had traditionally been fished wet and one of the older guys with whom I spent a lot of time fishing continued to use it as a wet pattern up to his death. He caught fish on it but I can’t imagine what the fish mistook it for as it whirled through the water like a helicopter going down. What would he say today if he saw me pulling a Booby dabbler out of my box.

In last weeks blog I mentioned that Billy changed to his favourite Cortland Clear Camo Intermediate line, that was not available in the earlier years. There was floating, Neutral, sink tip and sinking of which we used floating and if that was not working we headed to an Island and had tea or the pub and talked about the days to come when it will work ( We were always optimists). Yeah, those Nice guys in the tackle trade have certainly complicated things. We do catch a few more fish though and if we are smart to make the appropriate changes at the appropriate times we even out fish our boat partners, especially when our boat partner is daydreaming about the past.

A lot has changed and i’m glad to say that, in my opinion at least, it has changed for the better. We think more about our fishing and with all this new equipment we have a lot more options . Our understanding and attitude towards nature and the environment has improved. Most of us now try to give back to the sport we have and still do enjoy. I am sure that at some point in the future a young fella will write about the Old Tiernan guy he fished with, I hope he can say I was part of some positive changes.