Angling Around Ireland

By Colin McLean

The fly line hisses as it shoots through the rings, the salt-laden north wind catching it as it touches the waves. The angler, hunched against the elements, pulls in the slack, and waits for the line and flies to sink before beginning a jerky retrieve. Halfway back the line stops, then goes slack again. A muffled curse is lost to the breeze. That’s the second one to come short today. Three casts later a sharp tug is accompanied by a swirl amid the white topped waves. That one is on!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781528956321

Colin McLean

A Scotsman of advancing years, resident in the west of Ireland, the author has fished since he was a child. He started out working in a mill sweeping the floor and descended from that to senior management and consultancy, all the time finding relaxation and contemplation on Ireland’s loughs and rivers. Inherently mean, he ties his own flies, uses dilapidated tackle and drives old wrecks of cars but is generous with his time and advice. How his beautiful and talented partner puts up with him will forever remain one of life’s great mysteries.

Book preview

What Is It All About?

Ideas churn around in my mind as if stirred in some kind of witch’s cauldron. Most are flights of fancy which never get off the ground but sometimes, just occasionally, an idea grows roots and turns into actions. ‘32’ is one of those few notions which became a reality. I want to take a bit of time to describe to you this bold new idea of mine and how exactly I turned my thoughts into actions.

So what is 32? It is not the answer to all life’s questions nor is it indeed anything to do with maths or arithmetic. Those of you who are familiar with Ireland will instantly recognise it as the number of counties on the island of Ireland. A small history lesson may help to make things a bit clearer for those not well versed in the machinations of Irish history. When the Irish Free State was formed in December 1922, the English government wanted to hang on to the 6 counties which make up modern day Northern Ireland (please note this is not Ulster as it comprises of 9 counties, 6 in the North and 3 in the South).

That left 26 counties in what would become the Republic of Ireland. So 26 counties in the south, 6 counties in the north makes a total of 32 counties. Are you with me so far? The 6 counties in Northern Ireland are part of the United Kingdom and the other 26 together form the Republic of Ireland.

My great idea is to set out to catch a fish in each one of the 32 counties on the island of Ireland and document the highs and lows in the process. Why bother you may well ask? By the early winter of 2019 I came to the conclusion that the previous couple of fishing seasons had been a disappointment for me with repeated blanks and poor catches from my local waters. At the same time, I could recall some brilliant fishing in other parts of the country from my past. Spinning for bass in Kerry as the sun rose in the east, catching feisty little brown trout from a tiny lochan on a hillside Donegal, rainbows leaping as they felt the hook on a put-and-take in Tyrone—the list goes on and on. It all seems in such sharp contrast to the endless blank days on lough Conn I had endured over the past 2 seasons. Mulling over these past successes and recent failures I came to the conclusion that I needed to spread my piscatorial wings somewhat and try new venues. From there, it was but a short hop to the need to give these wanderings some structure. That was when the concept of the 32 counties came me. There was no ‘Eureka’ moment, just a slow, plodding thought process which gradually took shape and found some structure as I sat making flies at home one winter’s night.

Sat at the vice on that December evening the idea of catching a fish in each county infiltrated my train of thought to the point where I stopped making the Sooty Olives which were so sadly lacking in my fly box. I logged on to my battered laptop, made myself a coffee and sat down to see who else had done this before. In all probability, many anglers have done but none of them seemed to have written anything of their wanderings. Over dinner that night I excitedly told Helen about my latest idea. Strangely, she seems less enthusiastic than I was and changed the subject, ‘Have you seen the news about that new ’flu in China?’

Refining the structure of the project took me a bit of time. Exactly what was I trying to achieve? What were the self-imposed rules of this venture going to be? My initial thoughts were to aim to catch a trout (any species of trout) in each of the counties but upon further examination this seemed to be a bit restrictive. The notion of encompassing all legal forms of angling fitted in better as I enjoy a wide variety of fishing experiences. In the end, I settled on a rather broad-based structure, ‘to catch at least one freshwater species of fish from each of the 32 counties on the island of Ireland’.

As for the timescale I initially felt it was important to set a firm start and end date. The obvious choice is 1st January to 31st December 2020 but I wouldn’t be able to commit to cramming all 32 into one calendar year. So, I decided to stretch the project over an elastic timeframe, starting on the first day of 2020 and just running on with no firm date for completion. Then Covid-19 struck! Travel was banned here in Ireland and the years of 2020 and 2021 were a patchwork of restrictions being imposed, lifted, reimposed and so on. Work dried up for me as a direct result of the pandemic which meant I had time on my hands but was not allowed to go anywhere. With the easing of restrictions in the summer of 2021, I was able to tick off a few more counties but the notion of completing the project within 12 months had been firmly knocked on the head by then. Instead, I just accepted the timescale was open ended.

I need to be honest here, I was not planning on spending a small fortune on this project. Cheap and cheerful was always going to be my approach. Expensive beats on salmon rivers were definitely out for a start. I’d make do with day-ticket waters when chasing silver. Here in Ireland we are blessed with lots of inexpensive fishing so there should not be any need to overspend.

Then there is the obvious lack of technical knowledge on my part. I am OK when fly fishing and spinning but all forms of coarse fishing were black arts to me at the start. Using feeders, ground baiting, float selection and shotting patterns, where and how to fish for the different species of coarse fish were all going to have to be learned and learned quickly. I didn’t have the luxury of an extended apprenticeship in coarse angling, catching a few perch and pike on spinners in Scotland or tiny roach by accident on the fly were the sum total of my experience. I had a lot to learn!

Now we come to the question of my health. I suffer from arthritis in my feet, ankles and knees which curtails much of my fishing. I also suffer with vertigo and until recently took medication to keep it under control. A flare up of either condition was going be a big problem. The arthritis is there more or less constantly, giving me a lot of pain in my feet and ankles and reducing my mobility considerably.

I have learned to live with it and put up with the pain. My vertigo is a different beast and an attack in 2018 left my sense of balance severely compromised and the need for daily medication after a five day stay in hospital. Until you lose your sense of balance it is impossible to realise just how important it is to your everyday life. Tackling the 32 counties would certainly mean taking my physical limitations into reckoning.

One of the great attractions of this venture was the sheer variety of locations out there for me to sample. I’ve always enjoyed the challenges of fishing new places so the mix of previously untried venues and methods of angling, all set against the backdrop of the Irish countryside seemed like a heady brew to this tired and jaded angler. I am well aware this is the exact opposite of the most efficient way of catching a few fish. Learning one water over an extended period allows an angler to really get to know the venue in such detail that they can catch fish on a regular basis. Jumping from one place to another does not allow you to learn this level of detail and means each new fishery must be quickly analysed and tactics adjusted based solely on one’s experience on other waters. I happen to really enjoy this process and was quite willing to accept reduced catches as a result.

Reaching the furthest corner of the Emerald Isle can be a bit of a trek from my base in Mayo. Antrim and Derry for example are 4–5 hours from home. The same goes for Wexford/Waterford area in the South-east. Although traffic can be heavy in the cities, rural driving is largely a pleasurable experience once you have grown used to the Irish style of driving. I drive very old cars so allowance would have to made for the possibilities of breakdowns too.

Tackle would not be an issue for the game angling as I own a range of rods and reels in good condition. Apart for small bits and bobs of end gear I didn’t anticipate buying any new tackle for trout fishing. Coarse fishing was a different story and I am shocked at the volume and expense of coarse angling equipment which the top anglers use on a regular basis. I own a pair of float rods, a couple of leger rods and some old, fixed spool reels to match. These would have to do for now. A selection of end gear and some new lines had to be bought though, as well as bait and ground bait. eBay yielded some floats, feeders and the like at a reasonable cost.

My plan was to visit local tackle shops which would provide me with permits, bait and ground bait and hopefully some advice as well. At the outset, I guessed the coarse fishing areas would present my biggest challenges and so the local tackle shops in those counties would definitely be visited and consulted. Irish tackle dealers are the same as those the world over, only too keen to help out anglers with advice as well as selling them gear.

I had to consider what happens if, despite all my planning, I failed to catch a fish at my selected venue. I was in no doubt that this was going to happen and possibly happen quite often. A blank would mean me visiting that county again and again until I caught a fish so blanks in Antrim or Wexford were going to be expensive and time-consuming failures! I decided the best approach was to give myself the maximum chance to catch fish at each venue, meaning I needed to do a lot of research into each place beforehand.

I also required backup plans for when things are going wrong. For example, finding a river in flood may rule out the chances of catching anything there but if I had a plan B in the shape of a second or even third choice of venue it could negate the loss of the first venue. I couldn’t just turn on my heel and drive all the way back home just because one river is out of ply. I figured that I needed varying locations and target species in light of any blanks, there being no point in going back to the same spot and hoping for a better result! There was a huge element of suck it and see with the whole of this adventure and making adjustment and changes as I was going along was part of its very fabric.

I wanted to try to vary species and methods as much as possible without tying myself to impossible dreams. My disturbing lack of knowledge about all forms of coarse fishing meant I would be taking some calculated risks but taking along a small spinning rod to cast worms or small spinners for perch should go some way to providing a back-up in many places. But I didn’t want this to end up as me simply fishing for the lowest common denominator. It would make for dull reading indeed if all I did was worm for perch. Hence the different types of venues and methods of fishing.

I read somewhere recently that a ‘good’ days fishing happens to competent anglers on average every fourth trip. I know my own average of good days is well below that level, leading me to conclude that I am far from a competent angler! Then again, what actually constitutes a good day? Long ago I abandoned all hopes of catching lots of big fish on a regular basis. Too often I have blanked on good waters while those around me hauled out their share (and mine too). As long as there is some faint hope of catching something I am a happy angler.

Once that hope dies, I pack up and head for home or the pub. Flogging empty water is a thoroughly depressing business and one to be avoided at all costs in my book. Attempting to catch a fish in each county in this land was going to test my resolve and willingness to keep going even through tough situations. Any stretch of a trout river is going to be a joy to fish and I’m comfortable casting small flies for wild trout, meaning these venues were going to be the jewels in the crown for me. What to do when Bream or Tench refuse my cunningly presented feeder was going cause me much more difficulty.

Density of loose feeding, castor versus maggots, boilies or minis? As a complete novice, these and a hundred more coarse fishing conundrums awaited me. It proved to be a steep learning curve but one I am really enjoyed. I beg forgiveness in advance from those of you coarse experts who are reading this, all I can say is that we all had to start somewhere. My mentality is simply to catch one fish at each venue, not attempt to secure large bags. For me, one bream would constitute a good day’s bream fishing whereas an experienced match angler would consider that a disaster.

Planning with near military precision was going to be required and I spent many, many hours poring over maps and reading fishing reports. I intended being flexible and taking advantage of any opportunities which presented themselves as the months passed. No point in turning up at the other end of the country to find my chosen spot has not fished for a month or that it produces good catches in August but I am stood there in my waders in December! In these days of the internet it is relatively easy to glean sufficient information to make informed decisions but I had to accept that sometimes I simply got it wrong and be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such is angling!

So what did I hope to achieve by all this dashing across Ireland, waving rods at fish I had never caught before in places I have never even visited previously? I guess I wanted to address my jaded approach to angling, to re-invigorate my fishing so that I get more enjoyment out of it. Seeing new rivers and loughs, pitting my wits against fish in new waters and seeing more of the Irish countryside were all integral parts of the challenge. Isn’t a change as good as a rest?

At the same time I hoped to show you, the readers, some new and interesting places as I travelled the highways and byways of this lovely country. Ireland has the capacity to confuse, irritate and disturb you at times but alongside that there is a beauty and charm which is hard to match. I hope you enjoy reading about my travels, the successes and inevitable failures, the people I meet and the stunning locations I fish.

So, there you have it. I planned, over the period of a couple of years or so years, to catch a fish in every county on the island of Ireland. Would I succeed gloriously or fail miserably?

About the Writer

Let’s start with a confession—despite this book being entirely about fishing in Ireland I am not Irish. I am in fact ‘a blow in’, born a raised in Aberdeen, Scotland. The locals kindly put up with me because I have been hanging around this neck of the woods in the west of the country for many years now. By way of an introduction to me and my fishing here are some scribblings on how I arrived at this point in my life. It may go some way to explaining why I undertook this odyssey.

Born into a working-class family in the granite city of Aberdeen at the fag end of the 1950s, I was fortunate to be brought up in a loving environment. An absolute tearaway as a small child, always in some sort of trouble, I did poorly at school despite being of reasonable intelligence. I left at 17 years old one Friday afternoon and started working in a local papermill at 6am the following Monday. I can still recall being led by Stevie Alexander, the supervisor, into what seemed to be the very bowels of hell. Hissing steam, the clanking of old machines and men clad in little more than rags were all cloaked in dank darkness.

My employers saw something in me and promptly packed me off to the local Technical College where I did well, excelling in the technical subjects. So I worked hard, met a lovely girl and we got married. Like many couples we bought a tiny flat on the very edge of the city. After a few years, I took a job in Ayrshire and flew out to Finland for an extended period of training. Dawn and I left Aberdeen, never to return. From there, it was a role as Production Manager in another mill and we moved to Dunfermline, again working long hours and under near constant pressure.

Almost inevitably, my wife left me and I threw myself into work and my passions for climbing, hillwalking and fishing. I was living in an old house at the time which I decided to refurbish, pouring myself into rebuilding the place in the evenings after work. Weekends were spent on the razzle in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Looking back, I was leading an unsustainable lifestyle based around long hours of hugely stressful work interspersed with a chaotic social life, it could not go on like this!

All this time a big part of my life had been annual holidays in Ireland. I had visited the country first in 1977, hitching lifts or catching trains/buses to reach the town of Westport in Mayo. I loved it there, the fishing was good and the friendliness of the locals intoxicating. Over the next couple of decades I returned frequently, visiting the west coast mainly but venturing to many other parts as well. The hitchhiking gave way to manic motorbike trips and then four wheeled transportations. Sometimes I camped, other times I used B&B accommodation depending on my circumstances at the time.

A kind of a plan to retire to Ireland had been fermenting in my head over the years but those half-baked thoughts coalesced into something more immediate when I fell for a pretty girl in the town of Castlebar on one particular trip. My life then pivoted on to a completely new axis, one that still had many twists and turns to make. In November 1997, I boarded a Stena ferry in Stranraer and left the land of my birth, heading for who knew what in Connaught.

The next few years were unremittingly tough. Periods of unemployment, manual work when I could pick it up, a marriage which never really worked and, on reflection, the disappointment my life in Ireland was not the idyll I had imagined. I split up from my second wife, sold a lot of my personal belongings including my boat, then moved back to the UK, eventually finding myself in an equally small flat on the outskirts of Glasgow.

The year was 2005, I was 46 years old, unemployed and living alone. I guess this was a real low point but it did not feel like it, instead I sensed new opportunities were ahead of me if I made the effort. I applied for an MBA course at Cranfield University and, amazingly, was accepted. My scant worldly belongings went into storage in my mate’s shed and I headed off down the M1 to Bedfordshire.

Cranfield was bliss. I loved the learning, the challenges and my fellow students. All too soon I had to return to reality though and I found a well-paid job in London. The job kept me very busy and I made some money but life in the city was a torture to me. So I started to drift back to Ireland whenever I could wangle time off, meeting up with old mates and doing some fishing. When the job in London came to a sudden end, I decided to move back to Mayo in the late spring of 2008. Pitching up in Ballinrobe, I bought an old boat and fished Lough Mask, the river Robe and further afield.

During this time I was fortunate enough to bump into Helen and we quickly became inseparable. Moving to Castlebar was the next logical step and I have remained here ever since. To make ends meet I became an Interim Manager, working hard in high pressure roles on short term contracts. Those different roles took me to far flung places and I travelled widely during the early 21st century. The middle east, Africa and India were just some of the places I worked and the chance to experience different cultures made a big impact on me. I suppose for many people this sounds like an ideal existence and in many ways it was. I consider myself to be extremely fortunate to have lived the life I have and to be here in the west.

So what about my fishing experience? My angling apprenticeship was on the rivers Dee, Don and Ythan in Aberdeenshire in the company of some excellent fishermen, many of whom are sadly no longer with us. In those far off days, salmon and sea trout were present in good numbers and big baskets were not uncommon. Spring salmon are now rare and the huge runs of summer grilse are but a memory. Here in Ireland the ecology of the great western lakes has altered and the massive hatches of flies and accompanying rise of trout are also a thing of the past. I fish hard for meagre returns, as do those expert anglers I am lucky enough to fish with. Despite all these problems, I still get out as much as I can and enjoy the Irish countryside.

Fishing in Ireland is much more than just going out with a rod and catching a few fish. The challenges are great and the results sometimes leave a lot to be desired but the ‘craic’ is a huge part of the whole angling scene. In modern Irish culture, ‘the craic’ is good enough reason to do just about anything and fishing is an extension of that devil-may-care attitude to life which I think goes a long way to defining the Irish.

In addition to the actual angling, I also tie a few flies, both copies of existing patterns or more often my own designs or derivations. Many are the tales of the ones which worked and the ones which didn’t (many more of the latter than the former I am afraid). Dark winter evenings are often spent at the vice, churning out flies for myself or for other anglers. These days I get as much pleasure from hearing a fellow fisher landed a good trout or a salmon on one of my flies as I do catching a fish myself.

My apologies in advance to all you coarse anglers who are reading this book. Having never been a coarse fisher before starting this project it has been a steep learning curve and my woeful lack of experience means that my early forays with the float and feeder were amateurish in the extreme. In between the ‘32’ outings, I was busy learning the basics of coarse fishing and spent many hours on the banks of loughs and canals getting to grips with the technical aspects of the sport. To say I have a lot yet to learn is an understatement but I am a willing learner and absolutely love fishing for roach and tench. My only regret is not taking it up earlier.

I am not a tackle tart who invests huge sums in the latest hi-tech angling equipment. Instead I try to maintain my gear so it lasts as long as possible and view the tackle industry through a jaundiced eye—it looks like a marketing managers dream and we anglers are the suckers who rush to buy the latest new-fangled gadgets. Most of my gear is over 20 years old and some of it dates back to my teens. A few rods and reels were bought new but over the years I have purchased a lot of second-hand gear.

It fits in with my views of over consumption and the reckless consumerism which blights western society. I’d rather reuse something which is adequate for the job than buy a new one. I accept that many people would view my collection of rods and reels as little more than junk but it works for me and I catch the odd fish here and there on it so I am happy out.

The same views on over consumption and waste apply to my personal transport. I have owned relatively few cars during my life. Instead of swapping them every couple of years for the latest gadget laden model I hang on to my cars, running up huge mileages on them by maintaining them well. To me, this is sensible and means less of a drain on our planets limited resources. It also means I am a laughingstock, noted by many for the old rust buckets I habitually drive around in.

I could go on and on about myself but I think this is sufficient for you to get a basic idea of who I am. I’ve led a full and very happy life, been lucky enough to travel and see many exotic places, meet amazingly gifted and talented people and reside in a safe, friendly society here in Ireland. My idea of catching a fish in every Irish county brought me to places I had never been before as well as catching lots of fish. I hope these scribblings may inspire you to try out the fishing here in Ireland for yourself.

Colin McLean

AKA the Claretbumbler

Chapter 1

Sligo

County number 1

Thursday 6th August 2020

Making a start

Some projects start exactly on time, the first steps of a meticulously planned operation where all the little cogs and wheels start to spin in synchronisation. My 32 project was the exact opposite, it commenced almost by accident and I was totally unprepared bar some cursory checking of a wrinkled OS map and a visit to one website. This level of ineptitude would not sustain me going forward but it did get the ball rolling so I am not going to be overly self-critical. My planning would improve over time as more distant counties were tackled but as Sligo was almost next door, I got away with my slovenly approach this time.

So in early August 2020, I finally was making a start to this odyssey by visiting Lough Talt in the neighbouring county of Sligo. My vague plans to start the 32 project early in 2020 were dashed by the pandemic. We were all of us plunged into a welter initial fears and apprehension but for me this dread was superseded by feelings of injustice as I was not allowed to travel more than 5 kilometres from home for many months.

I found being banned from just going out in my boat far from any other human being insufferable. The virus waxed and waned, the fluctuations wrong footing the powers who run Ireland at every turn. Finally, now, in the summer of 2020, restrictions on travel eased somewhat, presenting me with a window of opportunity to start the project at last. I needed to pick my first county so I plumped for Sligo. Let’s not get overly adventurous to start with I thought.

I was out of work, again. What I euphemistically referred to as ‘resting’ between the short terms assignments which made up my working life those days. Interim management is not for everyone and those breaks between jobs would be intolerable for many people. It’s an odd sort of existence which swings violently between busy beyond belief to what borders on idleness. I liked it that way, humdrum is bad for people like me. So that summer, while awaiting the next call to go and fix some issues for a company somewhere, I began my little vanity.

As this little venture progressed and grew it would throw up a whole series of challenges for me. The most obvious was a lack of local knowledge for the vast majority of the venues I would be fishing. I know my own ‘patch’ around Mayo reasonably well but beyond that I would be pretty much in the lap of the gods. Even though Sligo is very close, I had virtually no local knowledge to fall back on. I’d wing it!

It was a low-key start to the project, no fanfare or tickertape. I informed nobody that I was kicking off the project on that day, it just sort of happened. Now, as Ireland appeared in the sunlight of rediscovered freedoms it felt right to make a start. The threat of further travel restrictions hung over us all so I was well aware this could be a false dawn but the need to get out and about exerted a huge pull on me. August is a funny month to be starting any sort of a fishing expedition. Our game fishing season closes at the end of September so I knew I was not going to get much done but the need to be on the water was too strong to be ignored. Putting off action any longer felt wrong, maybe the lockdowns had made us more aware of the need to live for today.

Why Sligo? Firstly, it is close by for me, just a few miles to the north of my home in Mayo. Driving to one of the distant counties felt like taking on too much for my first foray. I have never fished in Sligo before so it still retained that element of challenge but without a long road trip it would be less demanding on me than most other counties. I’d ease myself into this, a summer afternoon jaunt just up the road instead of a full-blown adventure visiting the other end of the country. By selecting a venue where I would be fly fishing for trout, I felt I was also reducing the risk of a blank on my very first outing.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool fly fisher, ten feet of carbon fibre seems to grow naturally out of my right hand. It has been my lifelong passion. Natural baits suspended under floats and other similar black arts would need to be learned but for now I’d stick to what I know.

Sligo is an amazingly beautiful county with a rich history. The county town is a bustling hub for business and culture, miles of beaches face the Atlantic ocean and pretty little villages dot the green fields of this western county. The bones of William Butler Yeats lie under the shadow of Ben Bulbain while the pubs are filled with Irish traditional music.

Lough Talt sits in a glen amid the Ox Mountains just inside the Sligo border. Those of you unfamiliar with the west of Ireland will be amused to know the Ox Mountains are a range of low hills a few hundred feet high. There are no towering crags, steep slopes of loose scree or hanging corries, only mist shrouded rounded hills clad in heather and sheep nibbled grass. It may lack alpine grandeur but it is still a very scenic area much loved by walkers and hikers. Indeed, on this day the path would be busy with family groups and dog walkers out enjoying the fresh air.

I reached the lough after a quiet drive via Ballina and the little village of Buniconlon. The road twists and turns as it gains height then drops again as the lake comes into view. A short, narrow road leads to good parking at the south end of the lake with room for a dozen or so cars. Shutting off the engine, I dragged my stiff frame out of the car and opened up the boot. Unsure of the terrain ahead of me I pulled on a pair of thigh boots and a waterproof jacket then turned my attention to rod and flies.

My elderly eleven foot, six weight Hardy with a floating line would do. I missed a ring when threading the line, a near constant error these days for me. Failing eyesight is another of those gifts bestowed upon us aging fishers. Tackling up with a three fly cast I tied on the ubiquitous Bibio on the bob, a Jungle Wickhams in the middle and a small Claret Bumble on the tail then I set off crunching along the gravel track around the lough. The stretch of shoreline near the car park was uninspiring so I plodded on in waders.

I