The Kells Blackwater River

Over the last year I have crossed this river a number of times just outside Kells town in Co Meath, and always looking out my car window seeing the numerous fingers of water that flowed along and I wondered how productive the catch would be for a day on the fly. Any angler that approaches a unfamiliar river for the first time has a gut feeling and just by looking at the lush vegetation and rich bed I had a good feeling that I would be in for a sporting afternoon.

The river has a active club, The Kells Anglers Association and day tickets are available at a cost of 20 euro for the day and 10 euro for the evening session. Once I got my day permit from the local Tackle shop and gathered some information from the locals I parked my car just five minutes outside the town and tackled up in hast. It only took the first few seconds of the nymph in the water before a lovely plump trout snapped it up and this form continued for the majority of the fist couple runs that I fished. I then traveled up a nice stretch of the river, fishing pockets here and there and admiring the fabulous water quality and wildlife living here. 

Nymphing up stream with my 3 weight Hends rod suited perfect and I was using a leader of 6x and around 7foot long to my indicator, wading was also very easy underfoot and in a lot of the first section of the river was unnecessary; due to the river dividing into several small fingers and just kneeling behind the rushes and reaching out was sufficient. 
Throughout the afternoon I changed many flies and found that the usual suspects worked well such as the pheasants tails with tags and different colour dubbing behind the gold beads, mostly the smaller nymphs produced the most fish, around size 14-18. A Stripped Quill micro nymph and a Olive Shrimp pattern proved to be the most attractive to the fish throughout the afternoon. I also managed to pick up a few fish on the dry fly when the sun appeared and temperatures rose slightly, the fish came to a small Hares Ear Sedge.

Time to head home, the evening is closing in and the Autumn chill is setting in for the night, the fish counter read 41 fish over competition size so I went home quite happy. This is a wonderful little river with lots of fish and an abundance of life, the general stock of fish is around 9-11 inches with some quite larger and sporting fish also to be had.  I look forward to next year to visit it again perhaps not so late in the season.