Off to Ireland tonight. This time tomorrow I'll be on the banks of Lough Oughter. Asleep in my chair.
I like reading your fishing posts mate, I get your enthusiasm. I had the same enthusiasm for many years, especially as a lad. I'd go every spare hour I could. And you're bang on about about buying tackle and looking for waters to fish. I have lost the bug nowadays. I'm hoping I'll get it back and go more often. I have more tackle than I'll ever need or ever use. I still have poles whips and pole floats so fine tipped, I'd struggle to see a bite. I spent many an hour on a half frozen canal tying a 24s fine wire hook by hand to a trace as low as 6oz to try to eek out a few small perch roach n' gudgeon on a single bloodworm or squat.(tiny maggot) I even fell in the Rochdale canal trying to break the ice one January and was soaked to the bone almost suffering hypothermia. I asked my mate to take me home but he wouldn't as we'd only been there an hour and caught nothing.best of luck,because if the fishing bug bites you'll spend all your time and money looking for gear or places to fish,every piece of water you pass you will stop and wonder, its fucking great :)
Haha. Proper Noddy stuff indeed mate. I've had many a Noddy moment whilst fishing. Tangled line, embedded hooks in my fingers, snapped rods, maggots escaping all over the house when I lived at my mum n' dad's. 3 days later flies everywhere and lots of cursing from my mother. Shitting myself as a lad when I thought I was about to be tossed into a farm pond by a raging bull, only to be saved by my dad running up to crack it's arse with a bank stick, phew, lucky me!... All in good fun though: )Just remembered I fished Lough Oughter 25 years ago at Killykeen National Park. Went in an afternoon, piled bait in and got into a shoal of bream. We tried to night fish it back then when we weren't very experienced at night fishing, and both of our torches failed. We wound in and slept in the car. I accidentally left my rod with a worm on right in the margins, inches from the bank, and came back in the morning to find the rod was snapped and there was slime everywhere. An eel had picked up the bait, hooked itself, gone mad and ended up snapping the rod and line.
Proper noddy stuff.
Haha. Proper Noddy stuff indeed mate. I've had many a Noddy moment whilst fishing. Tangled line, embedded hooks in my fingers, snapped rods, maggots escaping all over the house when I lived at my mum n' dad's. 3 days later flies everywhere and lots of cursing from my mother. Shitting myself as a lad when I thought I was about to be tossed into a farm pond by a raging bull, only to be saved by my dad running up to crack it's arse with a bank stick, phew, lucky me!... All in good fun though: )
Just remembered I fished Lough Oughter 25 years ago at Killykeen National Park. Went in an afternoon, piled bait in and got into a shoal of bream. We tried to night fish it back then when we weren't very experienced at night fishing, and both of our torches failed. We wound in and slept in the car. I accidentally left my rod with a worm on right in the margins, inches from the bank, and came back in the morning to find the rod was snapped and there was slime everywhere. An eel had picked up the bait, hooked itself, gone mad and ended up snapping the rod and line.
Proper noddy stuff.
I've had the same circle of 6 close fishing friends for over 35 years and we've had some fun and laughter fishing. A couple of times I remember we're at my expense.I could tell tales all day. Maggot spillages...had loads, including one last winter in the car. It took a couple of weeks because of the cold, and I was just starting to think they'd found a hole to escape, when the hatch started. Wife wasn't HP.
One of the best things about fishing with mates is the associated tales: falling in, getting lost, face to face encounters with animals, pranks etc. When my mate hooked a big carp in the middle of a colossal overhead electrical storm in remote southern France. Or when I hooked a rotten bream on his line whilst he went for a shit. they are some of the funniest things I've ever seen.
I've had the same circle of 6 close fishing friends for over 35 years and we've had some fun and laughter fishing. A couple of times I remember we're at my expense.
We'd go fishing regularly in the summer and I kept getting a nasty whiff of something unpleasant but couldn't work out what it was. Anyway one hot day we're all sat round having a chat and a brew on the bank and I asked them what they thought the smell was. I noticed a few giggles and wry smiles. "Come on, what the fuck is that smell, what have you done?".... Silence, then a few more smiles and giggles. I sussed out the stench was immediately around us and started going through my tackle. I unzipped my rod holdall and tipped it upside down to find a pool of fishy slush fall on the floor. One of the rotten cunts had found a dead Jack pike and stuffed it down one my rod tubes!
The other time was when we all arrived to the fish the Trent. We turned up at the same time in two cars to leg it to the bank fully laden with full kit and buckets of maggots casters and hemp. I was young and fit back then, pretty strong too and very eager to march across 3 farm fields to get to a good peg. I arrived and collapsed, absolutely fucked, sweat dripping off me. My mates started laughing mischievously!...I opened my Riva box to find a fuckin' big drystone wall slab had replaced all my kit inside! When they saw me open my box to see my face they were pissing their sides in laughter. I told them they go get fucked if they thought I was fishing a duff swim. My mate Mark admitted it was him and went back to the car for my stuff he'd hidden!
He wasn't a keen angler but he was into scuba diving. I found that out when he came through my swim unnoticed till he popped up and scared the shit out of me! Lol.
You're right. The lodges at Killykeen are abandoned now. The Irish have largely fogotten the fishermen and the fishermen have largely abandoned Ireland.
Lord knows where the bream have gone but they have. Very dramatically. On Lough Oughter there are a lot more decent tench though they seem to be in certain places.
Essentially, we go these days for the peace and quiet seeking out the most remote locations either by boat or by exploration.
As for angling tales, I've been laughing at some of the escapades descrived on here. We all have them and they are great to look back on. At my dad's funeral (he's scattered at Lough Oughter mixed with groundbait as promised) we all laughed at the time his umbrella blew across the river and was last seen providing hours of fun for a herd of heifers as it bounced away over the horizon. As for cuts and things, my mate, a dentist, carries a full surgical kit to cut out hooks and/or stitch up the wounds. It's been used on more than one occasion.
Haha. Great tales also mate: )Brilliant stuff mate.
I put a massive dead cod in my mate's coolbox with the head up, and asked him to get the milk. That was a good one. Also a live eel in a baitbox too. Last year on The Wye the same mate was leaning down a steep bank to net a double figure barbel and he got the fish in the net and then, in slow motion, went head first into the river.
The worst one I was victim of was when I was about 14. There was a rotten roach or something up the bank and the stink was bothering us all day. I was sitting concentrating on my float and I thought the smell was getting worse. Suddenly a rotten fish smashed me in the face and broke into pieces all over me. He'd hooked it, walked it behind me and swung it right in my head. I wasn't laughing about that one: I was trying to twat him but I couldn't catch him.