April was a month of cold winds from the North and East and accordingly we had little rain. Towards the end of the third week of the month we had slack winds which gave us large hatches of olives which were greedily feasted upon by the brown trout and the gulls.The start of April saw the duckfly peter out rather soon and did not last long. This may be because of the cold winds and when we did have some warm weather during the end of March it seems that this was the time of a lot of hatching of duckfly and fish moving to them . However into April, there was little signs of duckfly and the cold winds seems to keep the fish down as well.While last week saw plenty of activity, it was hard work getting the trout to take olives either wet or dry. I was out from Birchall on Sat 22nd April and while I counted up to 15 boats in the area, some dry fly fishing or buzzer fishing, others wet fly and some using a dapping rod I only saw 1 fish being landed even though there was plenty of fish rising to the natural olives. This coming week, commencing 24th April is scheduled to bring cold Northern winds and some rain later in the week , I am not expecting great fishing although olives may still be hatching during the April showers. There was also reports of the odd mayfly making an appearance last week on the upper Corrib but I would expect this cold spell to set back the main mayfly hatch for awhile.
