2nd July 2014
Apart from a few light showers, the rain the river needed never came over during the week – there were some torrential downpours in places but no water fell in the Erriff valley. Water levels were at rock bottom for the entire week. However despite the low water, sea trout continued to run up the fish pass in very good numbers with over 800 recorded for the month. There were also a scattering of salmon moving up from Beat 9 into the lower beats. The few rods that braved the conditions had good sport. It was a time to dispense with the traditional salmon patterns and switch to the smaller lightly dressed sea trout flies.
Annie and Hugh Woodsend, UK, fishing the Erriff for the first time had 10 sea trout up to 2.5lbs taken on various small flies including Teal & Silver, Black Gnat and a Butcher. Knocht Roland, Switzerland caught a grilse on a Hare’s Ear in the Falls Pool on Beat 9 and also some beautifully spotted Brown Trout on Moher Lake. Ken Mills, UK, landed a sea-liced grilse in the Bridge Pool on a lightly dressed Hairy Mary. It was a super sea trout fishing week for low water expert Raphael Amat from France – Raphael topped his record sea trout catch of 52 last season, and recorded a catch of 75 sea trout up to 2.5lbs!
In addition Raphael also caught 2 sea-liced grilse – all 77 fish were sportingly released again. This is certainly a new record catch for the river in recent years and would compete favourably with that of Dr. Francis Briggs’ sea trout catches in the late 70s. The most successful patterns were Stoats Tail, Black Pennell, Black Shrimp, and tiny Cascades – all flies were tied by Raphael himself and all very lightly dressed.
At the time of writing the report anglers are booking flights and preparing to travel – and with the weather forecast for rain on Friday prospects for salmon fishing are looking much better.
The fish trap at Aasleagh Falls allows all upstream migrating salmon and sea trout on the Erriff to be counted, before being allowed on upstream.The blue probe contains a hydrophone to check for sea trout fitted with acoustic tags as part of a tracking programme.