‘In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside 24 hours’
Mark Twain

I’m very conscious of a quote by Oscar Wilde which goes ‘conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative’. While not wanting to be classed as without imagination I still find it a bit of a struggle not to write about the weather particularly as it is one of the determining factors as to how Lough Sheelin fishes, so briefly here it is. Right up until mid-week, fishing on this lake was poor due to crippling North Westerly and Easterly winds which whipped the surface water touching even the most sheltered areas of this lake with its bitterly cold tongue. On Tuesday, along with sharp North easterly winds we were treated to a number of showers of ‘golf ball’ hail stones which effectively killed off any fly hatches and drove the trout down deep (two metres or more).

A reprieve came, thankfully, on Thursday with a rise in day time temperatures coupled with a smur of rain which produced some serious buzzer hatches along shorelines and bays, particularly around the Bog Bay area. Friday again was very cold which affected the buzzer hatches but when things became a little milder around 8pm that evening the fish returned to surface feed.

By Brenda Montgomery
Read the full report here.