It’s red pin time again. The Owenduff meanders through peat hags in Co Mayo towards the Atlantic. There are clumps of rhododendrons in blossom along its banks. A few scruffy sheep mooch about. The country looks devoid of any human habitation but on inspection there is a sprinkling of small houses.
I fished a stretch of river in Ethiopia where there was likewise no sign of human life. Within fifteen minutes I was engulfed by curious locals. In Mayo a water bailiff, on the watch for poachers who net the river for salmon, turned up for a chat; then a farmer on a quad bike looking for some sheep. When I was in the south Sahara people turned up out of nowhere on camels or in Toyota Land Cruisers. If you want to get away from it all, stay at home.
The Owenduff is a spate river and a little less lazy meandering and more urgency would have encouraged salmon to come up the river to spawn. My brother is a good fisherman and caught two. My sister-in-law, my sister and I didn’t catch a sausage but it is a beautiful place to be and a lovely river to fish. Except for the rhododendrons there’s nothing to catch your fly in and it’s such a small river that a trout rod covers the water easily.
I first fished here in 1991. On the 9th June, a Sunday (blush, blush, but it’s OK in Eire) I landed my first salmon, 11 lbs 8 oz, on a rather inadequate trout rod, without a net and on a stretch with high banks. When I returned triumphantly to the lodge my brother drawled laconically “that was a very unlucky fish”. Seven of us from that trip twenty-six years ago were fishing there again this week.
There is a lot of hocus-pocus about choosing flies. Some anglers obsessively change them and spend more time doing this than actually having a fly in the water. My brother is pretty sound; fish with a treble hook because you are more likely to hook a fish. My sister-in-law likes a double hook. All I can say is that my fish caught on the Boat Pool in 1991 was the biggest salmon that I have ever caught and it was on a double hook. The fly was a thunder and lightning, if you must know.