Fishing Trip to Ireland - the 1970's

One year in the 1970’s I was invited to go with 7 other anglers on a fishing holiday to Limerick in Southern Ireland. I can’t remember all their names, but they all belonged to the Salisbury and District Angling Club. The ones that I can remember were, Gordon Tedd, Brian Duckett, John Stephenson, Lester Gower, John Eadie from the tackle shop in Salisbury and his business partner Tom. I can’t remember Tom’s surname but between them they ran the Tackle Business.

Gordon Tedd’s family owned a bus company and he was able to get us the use of a minibus for the duration. The bus was just big enough for us at a squeeze with all our mountain of fishing tackle and bait. This included about 6cwt of ground bait. Packed to the gunnels, we made our way across the country to the port of Fishguard in North Wales. We then boarded the ferry and sailed over to Dublin. Having survived a very choppy crossing we then had a 100 mile journey to arrive at our motel in Limerick.

Our main plan was to make a concerted attack on the River Shannon at a stretch known as O’Briens Bridge. We had chosen the venue and time of the year very carefully. Gordon Tedd and others had fished there before and they were aware that the large bream shoals tended to clean themselves off after spawning in the shallower water at O’Briens Bridge. It was the same every year.

Most of the River Shannon was up to 20ft deep in a lot of places, but in this area the depth was more like 8 feet deep. The bream averaged from 4 to 6lb in weight so it would be quite easy to catch large weights if they were feeding well. The bream had also inter bred with the local roach and rudd population so there were many hybrids to catch also. These tended to go to just over the pound, but they fought well for their size. The area we intended to fish had large beds of reeds along the bank and because of this there were only 3 fishable swims available. The river was massive and about 60 yards wide at this spot. The bream had spawned in April and now in May were ready to clean themselves off and feed in earnest.

Obviously, being a party of 8, we knew that we could not all fish the 3 available swims at the same time. We decided to fish 2 swims each day for a total of 4 days, so each of us would have a crack at catching them. We drew lots to see which day we would fish and I drew day 3. I was quite happy with my draw as Gordon had told me that it took a while to draw the fish into the swims. By the time I got my chance almost 4 cwt of ground bait and lob worms would have been fed into the swims and the shoal would have had a couple of days to locate the feed.

Each angler agreed to carry half a cwt of ground bait with them to the swims and to mix it up and deposit it into the swims. Gordon and Lester managed to take more bait with them on their visit so plenty went into the swims to keep the shoals there.

It was a half mile slog from the bridge to our chosen area and so tackle carriers with wheels was a must. Gordon had told us all to bring this type of tackle carrier with us on the trip so we were prepared for the slog.

Before telling you how we all got on I would like to appraise you of some of the other fishing we did on the days we were not at the bridge on the Shannon. On the first day the 6 of us that were not at the bridge decided that we would fish a small river about 10 miles up the road from Limerick. We dropped the two anglers at the bridge and arranged a pick up time with them. The then made our way to this little river. We had been told by some of the locals that the river contained a good head of roach and some trout. That appealed to us so off we went.

We made the mistake of putting too much bait into our swims and the local trout population went berserk and we all caught trout after trout and not many roach. The trout gave a good account of themselves and so we were not too disappointed on the first day. By the time we had finished we had caught about 60 trout weighing on average just over the pound mark. We decided to knock them all on the head and take them back to the motel with us. The chef and staff were delighted and put trout on the menu that evening. As a favour for supplying the trout the chef agreed to provide us with packed lunches for the rest of the week, so that worked out really well for us.

When we sat down to dinner on that first day we heard that the fishing at the bridge had been a bit patchy. The weights caught in the two swims had been 50lb and 35lb.  The next day we fished a river called the Blackwater just below a mill race. I managed to bag a swim which was like a little spit which ran out into the middle of the river and I was able to fish directly below me without constantly having to mend my line to keep my tackle in a straight line.  It was easy fishing and there was 8 feet of water after a few yards directly in front of me. It was like I was on a bit of a shelf before it dropped off to the 8 feet depth. I was able to wade in and this helped me to stay cool on what was a quite hot day.

 I had lots of roach averaging the pound mark with the odd one weighing about a pound and a half. The bigger specimens started coming when I allowed my tackle to trot further down the river to where a tree had fallen into the river. I had caught about 40lb of roach and the bites started to tail off.

I decided to walk down the bank to where the tree lay across into the river. It had been sawn off but about 8ft of the trunk jutted out across the river, parallel with the surface but not hanging into the water. It was quite a thick tree trunk and I was able to sit comfortably on it facing downstream. I managed to hang my keep net from one of the sawn off branches. I dropped some ground bait and maggots behind me and watched it drift by me and below the tree. Again, I just had to drop my float in front of me and I was able to have complete control of my tackle as it trotted down the river. I was surprised to find that I had 10 feet of water depth in the swim, so it must have dropped off from the 8 feet I had further up off the beach. This explained why the bites had tailed off as I had reached the tree earlier.

I did not have to wait long or trot very far before I was getting unmissable bites. The float would lazily drift under and they were a pleasure to hit. I started to let the float go down a bit further and fed a little further down. By holding the float back against the current and allowing my hookbait to lift off the bottom every now and again, I started to get a better stamp of roach. They steadily got bigger, first over a pound and a half and some hitting the pound and three quarter mark.

I kept holding my breath every time the float went under, wondering if the next one would be the magic 2 pounder. In fact it turned out that my largest fish tipped the scales at 1lb 13ounces. Altogether, a bag of fish on the day of more than 75lb of roach. The only bad thing about the fishing was that every now and again a lump of human excrement would float by and that my keep net was very brown when taken out of the water. I had to wash it off afterwards in the mill race to get rid of the cr**.

When we met up with the two anglers from the bridge on the Shannon, we were told that they had caught 243lb and 165lb respectfully. As I was fishing at the bridge the next morning I was quite excited about the prospect. I decided to go to bed early so I could make an early start the next morning in order that we could ensure our chances of getting the two swims we wanted.

We had been warned by our friends that a group of gypsy boys had been showing more than a little interest in our fishing at the bridge and that one of them had lost his tackle carrier. A couple of them would walk up and start talking to them and stand behind the angler. While behind them other boys would take bits of the carrier away. 

First the wheels were taken and then the whole body disappeared. Obviously, the group of boys denied all knowledge of the theft afterwards. We would have to keep our gear very close to hand and try to avoid too much talking to the boys if we were approached.

The next morning we were a bit disappointed to find that the wind had got up and was blowing rather hard. The odd shower was cropping up on our journey to the bridge and that dented our hopes of a good session a bit more. We decided to think positive and hope that the rain would cease and that the wind would calm down a bit as the swims were out in the open and a bit exposed. We made the long slog up river to our swims and we were at least relieved to see no other anglers in them. On our arrival we discovered 4 inch waves on the river.

The wind however was in an upstream direction which would help. It would still be very difficult to control our float tackle down the swim. I set up a heavy float on one rod and a leger rig on the other. I put one of the thickest tips on the leger rod to counteract the waves and the wind. After mixing up a load of ground bait laced with cut up lob worms we gave the swims a heavy bombardment of about 15 large balls each. We both started on the tip and hoped that we could switch to the float if the wind abated. We used lobworm on a size ten hook, tipped with red maggot to stop the worms flying off on casting. It was about 7am when we made our first casts. The wind was so gusty that we could not put umbrellas to take shelter, so we had to brave it out in the teeth of the wind.

The first half hour brought only a couple of hybrids and a few small perch. We looked at each other and thought that the session was going to be very difficult. After nearly an hour the first big slab slammed my rod tip round. If I hadn't been holding the rod it would have shot into the river at a rate of knots.

After that the rest of the shoal arrived we both got slab after slab. There were two distinctive types of large bream. One type had lots of little nodules on their head and shoulders. They were rough to the feel when you handled them, a bit like sandpaper. Their colour was almost black and they weighed the heaviest, between 5 and 6lb. They were the ones that had obviously been spawning. The others did not have the little rough nodules on them, were just a little bit lighter in weight at between 4 and 5lb. All the fish, including the hybrids were not at all slimy and were easy to handle. This was really good as we did not get loads of the normal bream snot you associate with lake caught bream.

You could not miss the takes as your rod slammed round each time and you did not have to strike. We did have to put on heavy flat bombs so as to hold bottom in the heavy flow. In the 2^nd hour we both had around 15 fish apiece. I suppose we had about 60 lb of fish each. We had both brought a couple of keep nets each as we had been told by Gordon. The two anglers that caught the day before told us that the weights were going 25 fish to each 100lb, so we decided to use that as our measurement later on when we totted up the scores on the doors. After three hours we weren't far off the 100 lb mark with about eighty odd pound each. At that particular time the heavens opened and it chucked it down.

 We got thoroughly saturated like drowned rats. A short time later it stopped raining and just as if a switch had been thrown, the wind died down and we had blue skies. I decided to switch to the float because that was my original intention anyway. My partner decided to carry on using the tip and leger gear. 

In the next two hours the catch rate was quicker on the float and I caught a load of fish. Even with further bombardments of ground bait the fish had their heads down and continued to feed. After 5 to 6 hours of fishing we called it a day. We were both pretty tired being in the wind and then the rain, followed by the sun.  At the end we counted the fish back into the river from each keep net. I had 25 fish in one net and a further 22 fish in my other net. My partner had 25 in one net and 14 in the other. Both of us had hybrids but we didn’t really take them into account. On the slab count alone we reckoned the two bags were 185lb and 165lb respectfully. A fantastic result taking account of the bad weather.

Another bit of good news was that the gypsies obviously didn't like the weather and stayed away. As we mixed up a full half hundredweight of ground bait and deposited it into the swims for the anglers following us the next day, it started to throw it down again. We walked back to the bridge and sat under our umbrellas and waited to be picked up by Gordon Tedd and the rest of our party. What a day it was. We were absolutely knackered when we got back to the motel. To catch almost 200lb of fish in less than 6 hours fishing was a dream for me. I thought at the time that I would be unlikely to do so again and so it has proved. Nearly 40 years later and I have never achieved the like since then.

The next day the six of us who were not fishing the bridge swims decided between us we would fish one of the deeper stretches of the River Shannon to see what the deeper water might produce. There was such a stretch of the river as that not far from the motel. So there is where we went. I found it difficult to wake up that morning and also found it difficult to concentrate because of tiredness. It was sweltering hot and we all put our umbrellas up to get a bit of protection from the sun. I found it almost impossible to float fish with 18 feet of water in front of me so I went onto the tip. The size of the fish were much smaller and I knew that I had been thoroughly spoiled by the fishing I had the day before.

 At lunch time John Stephenson and I had had enough really and we decided we were going to have a break for a couple of hours. We asked the others to keep an eye on our tackle and headed back to the motel for a couple of drinks with our sandwiches. Well, we had two or three drinks and then one drink led to another. After a couple of hours we had both had a skinful. Being very tired, I must have headed back to my room for forty winks.

At about 5pm I was shaken very roughly and pulled out of bed by my fellow anglers and given a right Boll***ing. They were really mad at both of us as they had to break down and carry all our gear back for us. I think I said I was really, really sorry and then I think that I fell asleep again. I didn’t wake up till the next morning. The next morning the others were a bit offish with me and the ones that did talk to me delighted in taking the mickey out of me regarding not being able to take my drink like a man and calling me a lightweight.

 I just had to take it on the chin as I knew I had been stupid and let them all down. I busied myself loading my tackle onto the minibus and kept my head down.  If I thought that I was in trouble, that was nothing compared with my mate John. I was told that having had his skinful of about 8 pints of Guinness, he woke up in the evening. He went down to a dance which had been laid on by the motel. He started showing off his best dance moves on the dance floor.

Unfortunately his stomach could not take all the jigging and twisting. He threw up on the dance floor and let loose with the majority of the Guinness he had drunk earlier in the day.

 Other anglers who were in our party and at the dance said it was pandemonium and all hell broke loose as other dancers suddenly started to slip and slide all over the place. It was legs in the air and skidding into tables and chairs. I almost wish I had been there to witness it. John would be forever remembered as a dance legend for all the wrong reasons. John was lucky not to make a visit to the hospital.

All through the day our fellow anglers gave us real stick, but fortunately, John took the most ribbing. I can’t imagine how they managed to clean it all up on the night. I was told that the two anglers who fished the bridge on our infamous day, both had 100+lb bags.  Both John and I suffered bad hangovers for most of the day but we managed to fish the day out.

The 6 of us fished a small lily covered lake not far from the River Shannon. The lake was picture postcard and looked very beautiful with the lily pads and the odd overhanging willow trees. The rudd we caught were of a reasonable size and were very copper coloured with deep crimson fins. I was lucky enough to catch a personal best tench of a whisker over 5lb. This was quite a specimen for those days, but nowadays you can catch boilie fed specimens running into double figures. At the time, however, I was made up with my catch.

On the last day the two anglers who had the smallest catches at the bridge, were given the chance to fish there again. They had 150lb and 125lb bags respectfully, so everyone in our party went away happy. What a pair of swims they had turned out to be. Over the 5 days they had produced over a 1000 lb of  specimen bream for us. You couldn't have asked for better.

We had it in mind to make it a regular visit but not long after the IRA made it very dangerous for British angling visitors and I never went again. What a pity that such a beautiful country and such lovely local people had to suffer because of the politics and religious beliefs of others.

We were given fantastic hospitality by the locals and the motel staff, I can only hope that it all blows over and that they can be left to get on with their lives in peace.  By the time we had loaded the minibus with all our tackle and fishing nets it smelt quite badly as we all were by then. The nets smelled the worst and the hot humid weather made it worse. We opened every window we could but the smell was still pretty horrific. When we arrived on the mainland at the Port of Fishguard we were waved over by the Customs and Excise to be searched.

I suppose they thought we looked like a motley crew and they obviously thought we were up to no good. We were told to open the back doors and to take all our tackle and belongings off for inspection. The officer in charge marched round to the rear of our minibus and opened the back doors. He was almost knocked off his feet by the stench of it all as his nostrils almost took off from his face.

 As if by magic, you could see his mind racing and panic in his eyes. All of a sudden, he quickly closed the doors and said “ okay, get the hell out of here”. We clambered on board and drove off quickly, before he changed his mind. Once clear, we all collapsed laughing. We could have anything stowed in the minibus and I can remember thinking at the time, what a great way to smuggle stuff.