Ireland on the Fly - the people & places of fly fishing in Ireland – Details, episodes & analysis

Glenda Powell, who is well known in Ireland and abroad as a fly casting instructor and guide on the river Blackwater joins us on this week’s Ireland on the Fly.

In recent years Glenda has also been organising trips for salmon, sea trout and Arctic char to places such as Patagonia, Greenland and Iceland and having just spent two months in the land of fire and ice catching her personal best Icelandic salmon as well as some incredible sea trout and brown trout, we decided to catch up with her to find out more about the fishing as well as the ongoing protests amongst the population against the country’s increasing fish farms.

Plus, Glenda tells us of her love of travelling to new places to fish and how it also makes you appreciate just what we’ve got back home as well.

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This week  we speak to Judd Ruane, the well-known sea trout fishing guide on the Moy Estuary.  

Judd talks to us about the incredible days he has had as well as some of the famous names that have been in his boat, plus you’ll also hear about 16 years on the road touring Ireland, the UK and America with a Glen Miller style big band.

It’s fair to say that Judd has more than a few stories to tell about sea trout and a whole lot more….

And if you want find out more about fishing on the Moy Estuary, visit fishingireland.ie

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The Dodder is a unique and special river that flows through Dublin’s south city boundaries with salmon, sea trout and incredible brown trout in it – a fact not many capital cities can claim.

But as an urban river it faces many, ongoing challenges and Mark McAndrew, who is on the committee of the Dodder Anglers Association and fishes the river practically every day during the season, joins us this week to tell us about the remarkable survival and growth of the Dodder river as well as the challenges it faces in the future.

For more information you can visit the Dodder Anglers Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/dodder.anglers 

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Image: Dodder Anglers' Association.

For so many of us, fly fishing is also about the people, places and experiences we have, especially whilst discovering new places.

And so, for this latest episode of Ireland on the Fly, we speak to Cork fly angler, Ronan Collins, whom Daire first met in Greenland last year.

Ronan has fished in many far flung places around the world and is a particularly keen salmon angler with incredible stories from Russia and elsewhere, plus he also introduced Daire to the wonders of yacht-rock, but more on that later in the show…

Speaking to Ronan and hearing his stories about fly fishing around Ireland and the world is a reminder that it’s about fly fishing and about so much more.

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It’s January 2023 and a Happy New Year to all our listeners and to those of you especially who have been in touch with ideas, suggestions and for the competition as well.

We’ll be running a lot more comps with prizes of books, flies and fly boxes throughout the year so stay tuned for that.

And the winner of Mark Wormald’s The Catch: Fishing for Ted Hughes was Kevin Tripper so congratulations Kevin.

But back to this week’s episode and we hear from Shane Gallagher of the Drowes Fishery to hear how the opening few days of the salmon season went.

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Christmas 2022 has been and gone, the presents opened and too much eating and drinking gone on I’m sure and you’re probably counting down the days to the salmon season starting, or getting back out onto the water before the hectic work-life schedule starts all over again.

And so, for our last episode of the year we’ve put together a collection of some of our guests’ most memorable fish on the fly stories.  

With everything from small fish to giant fish and fishing with family and friends, they give a snapshot into just why we love to fly fish…..

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As it's the run-up to Christmas, we’ve got another instalment of our book club this week on the show and we’re discussing Ted Hughes and the influence of Ireland and Irish fly fishing on his poetry with Mark Wormald, a Cambridge lecturer and fly angler, who has written a superb book called The Catch: Fishing for Ted Hughes.
 
Mark stands where the poet stood, forty years ago, because fishing was Ted Hughes's way of breathing - and because the poet's writing has made Mark understand that it has always been his way of breathing, too. 

Using Hughes's poetry collection River and his fishing diaries as a guide, Mark returns again and again to the rivers and lakes in Britain and Ireland where the poet fished.

We also have a signed copy of Mark’s book to give away and to be in with a chance of winning The Catch, tell us the name of one of Ted Hughes’s poems and email the answer to info@lastcastmedia.com. 

We’ll contact the winner then over Christmas and have the book posted out to him/her.
 

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If you’re into saltwater fly fishing, by all accounts, 2022 seems to have been the year of the pollock with large numbers and large sizes of the fish being caught right throughout the season.

Are we seeing more pollock being caught because more anglers are targeting them on the fly?  And, what’s happened to the bass?

To find out more, for this week’s episode, we’re joined by Richie Ryan of Corkbass.com who is a guide specialising in catching pollock on the fly.

Richie told us of incredible days with 30-40 pollock being caught, how and when to target them and why, for him, bass is now playing second fiddle to pollock when it comes to saltwater fly fishing.

You can contact Richie by visiting Corkbass.com

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Another fish to target over winter is pike, with pike on the fly becoming increasingly popular in Ireland.

For this week’s episode we wanted to find out more about the set-up, the flies, the tactics and why fly fishing for pike isn’t just for Christmas either and we spoke to Markus Muller, an advisor to IFI and pike fly fishing aficionado, as well as Bodo Funke, the well-known pike guide based in Roscommon.

If you’re interested in finding out more or wanted to organise a day out fly fishing for pike, you can contact Bodo at anglingservicesireland.com

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You might be wondering why we’re talking about salmon for this latest episode in December, but as we get closer to the start of the season on January 1st, the IFI are busy finalising the data from the salmon tags for the 2022 season to make the final decision on what rivers will be open next year.

So, we decided to speak to Kevin Crowley from the IFI to find out more about the data they have, to give us some insights into the salmon numbers from this year and how the whole process works.

Kevin also has some interesting insights into policy and strategy around the salmon and it’s worth a listen.

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