2016 has been a difficult year to-date as the weather has been changeable, a week or two of warm weather in June and then back to windy wet days and little settled periods.
Because of the amounts of rain throughout the most of the months of May June and July, there has been good levels of water in the various systems and in early August, Corrib and other lakes are only finding their summer levels now. The high water while allowing salmon and sea trout to run into the various systems, it did not make for good catches of fish. However, now that levels have dropped we are finding the fish are more inclined to take. We also believe that there has been a good run of salmon into the river systems and that sea trout stocks have improved due we believe to lice levels being low on salmon farms in parts of Connemara, not something we have seen too much in years gone-by.
When conditions allowed, fishing on Lough Nualla has been good for small wild brown trout with many beginners to fly fishing catching fish.
The Crumlin system has been producing great sea trout in the 2-3lb range. This system was not open to the angling public for many years and for the past two years has been leased by Ireland West Angling, boats are available on a number of its loughs with day tickets. In line with other fisheries, it was necessary to introduce fishery rules of single barbless hooks with fishing restricted on Lough Ugga Beag to half a day and the other half fished on the neighbouring lough Ugga Mor.One of the best days this year saw an angler hook 15 sea trout with 12 brought to the boat and subsequently released. A number of the sea trout were large and all were in good condition and not showing any signs of lice damage- a welcome change.
