Roll on 2009

As it was the last day of my DCAL license I figured I had to at least spent a couple of hours on the only public water still open nearby - Woodburn Reservoir.

I haven't been out for ages so I was quite excited at the prospect of spending a couple of hours by the water. One silver lining of being a father is that I'm getting slightly more used to getting up earlier. This led me to being beside the water at the ungodly hour of 10am. Blurgh, i didn't know you could fish this early. One of the downsides of being there that early was that it was c-c-c-cold. I wrapped up pretty good, I'd tonnes of warm Christmas presents but one thing that let me down was the fact that my hands were freezing. I'd gloves with me but wearing them I had absolutely no line control, so off they came.

From the outset i knew the day was going to be difficult but judging from the number of fish stealing bastards cormorants, there did seem to be fish in the water. These proved to be a mile from the bank though. I mainly stuck to sinking lines and lures, but if I'm honest all this did was highlight a couple of casting deficiencies as i struggled to cast to the horizon. For a while it looks like fish had moved in to the shallow end of the reservoir and in calm water too. I had a crack at them with a bloodworm under a pimp but alas the activity turned out to be a family of duckings practicing their diving.

Unfortunately this ended up another fishless day, which meant i still haven't had an opportunity to try out an ingenious invention by Steve Dobson the Dobson Clip which holds your rod securely allowing both hands to be used to unhook the fish.

After noticing the varnish chipping off near my rod rings this has further prompted me to get a new rod for 2009. At the moment I'm dreaming about a Hardy Demon setup, but as this is a little out of my price range I'll have to settle for something else.

Therefore from today I've put together my Fishing New Year's resolutions

1. Get a new Rod (something pretty, that makes me cast like an expert)
2. Get some casting lessons, I'm dreading this, I've a sneaky suspicion I'm unteachable
3. Post to Blog more frequently
4. Stop Blanking

I'm not too sure how I'll manage the last one, but the first two are quite obtainable. Stevie Munn is rumoured to be an excellent casting instructor who also happens to be a online tackle dealer, I'm hoping that besides trying to break me out of my self-taught bad habits he can bring along a couple of rods for me to try out.

All in all, I'm quite looking forward to the new fishing year.

Tight Lines to you all for 2009

Did you ever wonder why you were standing in a gale waving a stick about

2nd Oct, Killylane Reservoir

After two very tough days, I figured the weather couldn't get any worse. My mate Andrew and I had planned to reward ourselves for our hard dissertation slog with an extended trip fishing. I had been out the past two days and I knew it was going to be an uphill struggle. So we decided to head to Killylane, as we thought we might get a bit of shelter from the strong winds. We've fished here before but today everything had changed, mainly due to the hurricane blowing straight through the reservoir.
Most of the day was spent tramping around the water to find a sheltered spot, this soon became impossible. At the end we were desperate, I chose to try the deep water in front of the dam wall, with a sinking line and boobies and Andrew chose an inlet that you could probably jump over. I managed about twenty minutes without being blown into the water and walked back to join the slacker sitting alongside the inlet. This tactic paid off for him though as amongst the eddies in the inlet Andrew had managed to catch the only trout of the day.