Fresh to strong and gusty west to northwest winds and with outbreaks of rain and drizzle, that’s the forecast and they are not wrong. It is wintry out. The weather has been nasty for a few days now and it looks like it is going to get colder over the Christmas.

We had plans last Sunday to launch High Hopes and fish Lough Cullin again. Sunday morning arrived and so did the wind, it wasn’t blowing a gale but the direction was not good. A quick discussion over a coffee and we had an alternative plan worked out. We headed for Levalley Lough to fish from the shore. Levalley is a nice Lough to fish, particularly if you are feeling lazy or the weather is bad. Along the East shore there are a few little places where the car can be parked beside the water, very convenient. Three of us fished for about six hours and we had four Pike, all on dead baits. It was an enjoyable session.

Its been a busy week for me apart from the Pike session last Sunday I did out get out fishing. I plan to change that over the Christmas period. We did get a brief window of opportunity to visit a place we know a few Salmon spawn. It was amazing, there was at least half a dozen large springers and a good few smaller fish darting about. I would be a pretty good judge of a salmons size, the smallest of the springers was approx. eight pounds, one of them (we both spent several minutes watching it) had to be very close on twenty pounds. It was great to see and makes me optimistic that there is good spawning. Below is a link to a very short clip, I only had my phone and the light was very bad for getting any footage. The river is up again and the chances of getting anything better are slim but I will try. It will be good to get out and walk the chocolate off.

https://clipchamp.com/watch/EihM4cTxvx3

Time to go and buy some Christmas presents. I wish you all a Happy Christmas, enjoy