A Lost Fish on Lough Corrib – Well, Almost!
A lost fish on Lough Corrib – for me this is the stuff of nightmares. I don’t mean losing one of those nice two pound trout that makes a day really special, I mean losing the fish of a lifetime. The one that in days gone by would have been destined to be immortalised in a glass case on my study wall, forever watching over my efforts at the fly-tying vice.
So, just to confuse things, this post isn’t about a fish I lost, but one I caught. The point is, if I had lost it, there is no doubt it would have been number one on my personal chart of lost fish tragedies. To the end of my days I would have been left wondering – what if ? and that would have been a deceit.
May 2001 Lough Corrib, fishing the Mayfly. Drifting between Inchagoill and Illaundaulaur. Over mayfly strewn boulders rippling yellow below the waves. Traditional fishing from a boat, this is as good as it gets.
I was fishing on my own, my usual team of two mayflies split with a jungle cock sooty olive. I am very traditional and keep my top dropper dibbling in the waves as long as possible. As I lifted off, within a foot of the boat, a fish quietly sipped the top dropper, taking so gently it hardly disturbed the ripple.
Nothing dramatic at first, and then the fish started to take line. Very … very slowly and steadily, no quick run, just a long concentrated hauling of my line off the reel. My heart was thudding, this was a very big fish!
The fight ebbed and flowed but always deep and steady, interspersed with the occasional head shake. This was unusual, I convinced myself that I must have hooked an early season salmon.
After half an hour – yes really! – I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy, things didn’t feel right, I still hadn’t seen the fish, there hadn’t even been the normal underwater flashes of silver.
I gained line, and after a further ten minutes saw my cast for the first time, still no sign of the fish, very weird!
Finally, from the depths, a big, ugly, dark green head emerged, to be met with an unprintable torrent of expletives from myself. This certainly wasn’t the early season bar of silver I’d been hoping for.
A few seconds later a ten pound pike lay in the bottom of the boat, with my Partridge & Green mayfly hooked firmly in the scissors.
I used to fish Corrib pretty light, and the cast was probably 6lb co-polymer, so it could be seen as a bit of a triumph that I managed to land the brute, but for me Corrib has always been about catching the trout of my dreams. This certainly wasn’t it – but at least I was saved the nightmares!
