Doubling up under the Dry Fly. Early season Dry Dropper on The Blackwater Co Cork.

So I headed down South today to meet up with a friend and my fishing buddy David O Donovan for the first time this year and we had planned to fish some rivers in County Cork. After some breakfast and a catch up, we decided to head to the Blackwater for a cast and went out past Mallow. We have had bit of a regression weather wise of late and the morning frost was still around as we began to set up. The river wasn't high but it was still pushing on and the cold air made it feel like a February morning rather than early to mid April heading to the river.

Dave's choice of method was his trusted wet flies that he is renowned for fishing and I set up a nymphing rod and a dry dropper set up.
If you want to get some insight to Dave fishing wets here is a link to a post he co-wrote on wets last year and worth the read: https://peterdriver.blogspot.com/2018/01/wet-fly-spider-fishing-productive.html

My Best Nymph on the Euro-nymphing Rig 

We both began in the same beat, with Dave moving down stream sweeping the water with his favorite Kelly green wet fly line and a cast of wet flies; he had a beaded wet on the point to get the flies down to the fish. For me I began to fish the sides of a run with the dry dropper; with limited success only picking up a pair of browns. I switched over to the nymphing rod and fished a little further out and met some better fish but it still wasn't prolific fishing by any means. The fish were stuck to the bottom and were not interested to move to far for a snack. After fishing the first run and picking up some 11 or 12 trout I moved to a glide down stream where Dave had fished the wets already. He had picked off a few trout with the wet fly but he had a lot of plucks

and takes with only a few transferring to the net. It looked cracking water, knee high and a a nice flow on it, once began to dry dropper the section I realized the flow was pushing through a bit too much and my nymph under the dry was not getting down. Now while I could have put up a heavier nymph to try get deeper, but this would have resulted in drowning the dry as I was already fishing a 3mm bead and to go 3.5mm or 4mm I wouldn't have had a long enough drift on the rig to cover the water needed to get a take. So I put up a second nymph on the rig and it was like switching on the light. With a second nymph under the dry it helped to anchor the nymphs better in the water with out dragging down the dry and allowed the point nymph to get where I needed to have it for longer drifts, and hense I began to meet a lot of fish. It can be a bit tricky fishing two nymphs under the dry as there is always the good chance of a tangle with two nymphs and a large dry moving through the air on a cast, but taking your time, have nice open loops and it will help to combat this.

My set up was an 11 foot 2 weight Syndicate pipeline rod and my trusted lever action reel with a 9 for aggressive tapered leader. From here I had .10 Shogun tippet to my size 10 klink dry

My best nymph under the dry on the point 

fly with a bright orange post around 18 inches and then 2.5 feet to my first nymphs with a 2.5mm beads followed with a 3mm copper beaded Pheasant Tail that done most of the catching, this nymph has been catching quite well lately and make sure and check out my youtube channel where ill post the tying in the coming days. The top nymph also caught a few as it was fishing higher up in the water table for any fish that might be looking up as the day warmed up.

It was a good days fishing and it is always a good day when to figure something out like that, no matter what your catch was. Hopefully the weather will turn and we will see a return to some warmer weather soon. But it was nice to get out with a good friend on the water for a cast and a good catch up.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this post and enjoy the 2019 season. If you would like to stock up your boxes for this coming year make sure and contact me through Facebook or email. If you have any questions or queries please feel free to contact me. Also make sure and check out my website www.piscari-fly.com for all your tungsten beads, flies, Dohiku barbless hooks, Tommi-fly products,the amazing Syndicate Fly Rods, Reels, leaders and much more. Thanks for reading.
Also check out my new YouTube channel for all my latest tying and hot tips. 

Fooling Trout On the 1st of April. Whats working on the rivers at the moment

So its been a while sense I have posted something on the blog, this was due to the arrival of my son a while ago and a slow start to the season. But after getting out for a few hours recently on a lovely tributary to the Nore in Kilkenny here is an update of where the fishing is at the moment and whats working.
For us anglers here in Kilkenny we don't have the pleasure of fishing before the 17th of March and the majority of rivers in this region of Ireland are slow starters unlike the Munster rivers that get flying in early February. It is normally around April before we start to see good movement of trout from there winter lies into the runs and some evidence of fly life that might get them interested.
At the moment the temp of the water around here is still about 8 to 9 degrees and with a rise of one or two more degrees we will see huge improvements in the fishing.
This morning I managed to get out on the water for a few hours on a stream near by my home, while the Nore is still too high and cold to produce a catch, these tributaries are where I do the majority of my early season fishing. With the odd but little foliage on the trees and not much fly life in the air, it was only the nymphing set up I took with me.  I picked a stretch that had a nice mix of water from fast water to glides where I would have plenty of options to find some fish. At this time of the year here the fish can be still in pods or groups and not fully spread out in the spring/summer lies.

I began fishing the tail waters of the pools, this calmer water is the most productive water for me this time of year. While it is flat it still has enough movement to euro-nymph with great results. It was only one cast or two and the fish start coming, some by the doubles. In the side margins I pick up a few salmon Parr. These averaged from 6 to 9 inch fish and while they were sporting indeed at this early stage of the season that was not the catch i was looking for; also great to see them in the river in abundance.

Once I began fishing in the deeper channels of the pools and glides, I began meeting some lovely trout in great condition for early April. This trend continued through out the 3 to 4 hour session from pool to pool. For my set up, it was a syndicate 10 foot 2 weight rod with a 20 foot leader and tippet. The leaders was an aggressive taper with Mirko Skafars Neon wax as the indicator instead of any bio colour mono. I find this a good set up as I can move the indicator wax as I am fishing different depths of water. For the tippet I was using shogun .12, because the water was dull in colour and I could get away with the heavier tippet.  A good thing to remember is that use the maximum diameter of tippet you can get away with, I can nymph with as low as .06 but if I can get away with .12 I will use that. This heavy tippet also means that at this time of year when I am fishing 3mm to 4mm tungsten beads dragging the bed of the river I wont lose as many nymphs and because the water is slightly coloured it dose not bother the fish or effect the results to my net. 

The nymphs were simple and two or three trusted nymphs of mine a pair of copper beaded pheasant tail and a gold beaded hares ear nymph. I was switching between 3mm, 3.5mm and 4mm depending on the depths of river I was fishing. When I was fishing the tails of the pools and the slower glides I would let the nymphs sink to the bottom and one I felt the tighten of the nymphs down deep I would flick them off the bottom with a slight movement of my wrist and drop them back down again through out the drift, this produced some good takes. It is also worth you while allowing the nymphs to swing around behind you as this produced some nice results also.

It was great to get out for the few hours and begin to see some real movement from the fish , also nice to get some action with a few nice lumps in the net also. It is to be a long season ahead with  comps and various fishing adventures so make sure and check in regularly and i will try keep you updated. Next i am off to the Munster Blackwater to get in some practice for a pairs come coming up
I hope you have enjoyed reading this post and enjoy the 2019 season. If you would like to stock up your boxes for this coming year make sure and contact me through Facebook or email. If you have any questions or queries please feel free to contact me. Also make sure and check out my website www.piscari-fly.com for all your tungsten beads, flies, Dohiku barbless hooks, Tommi-fly products,the amazing Syndicate Fly Rods, Reels, leaders and much more. Thanks for reading.
Also check out my new YouTube channel for all my latest tying and hot tips.