Believe it or not we have had three fish since my last update despite extremely difficult salmon fishing conditions.

Water levels have dropped steadily all week and the river is now at 8.

I thought we were going to get flooded out with all the rain that was forecast but of course when Met Eireann give out warnings like this it generally means it’s going to rain in Dublin and we should get the sun hats out.

Since the bad weather in Dublin we have only had 15mms of rain. So all I can say is that I wish we had some of the rain here.

Despite the gloomy fishing weather we did manage to land 3 sea liced fish.

Heidi Hoefler had a fine sea liced fish of approx. 9.5lbs in the Whin pool on Wednesday on a Silver Stoat.

Michael Pettigrew also had a sea liced fish of approx. 9.5lbs in the Rock pool on a Willie Gunn tube on Thursday. Then both Michael and his son Tim managed to break in a fish each which was a pity. Needles to say I reminded them of this fact.

Michael Pettigrew was top rod for the week and on Friday he managed to land a sea liced fish of 6lbs2ozs on a size 4 Cascade single in the Meadow pool.

We have some of Delphi’s top rods here this coming week so they will be severely tested as regards their piscatorial abilities.
D.McEvoy

Paddy was born in what is now Waterfall Cottage on the 27th June 1922. He was the eldest son John and Bridgit. He had two brothers, Michael who still lives in Louisburgh, and Jim who died of meningitis in 1945, and three sisters, Bridie who died of rheumatic fever in 1949, Mary who died in 2010 and Nonie who still lives at the home place at Doolough.

The Heneghans were originally woodmen from Cork. They moved to Mayo in the early 19th century to fell the once great oak woods along the Erriff River. In the 1890’s Paddy’s grandfather Michael lived near Ashleigh when he was recruited by Marquis of Sligo as caretaker of the property. At the time, he took up residence in what is now Waterfall Cottage where Paddy’s father John would have also lived until they moved to their house at Doolough, which was originally the residence of Captain Houstoun’s coachman. Captain Houstoun was the owner of Doolough house which is now a ruin.

That is basically how the Heneghans came to live in the area and a brief family history.

D. McEvoy
Click here – The following is a eulogy I gave at Paddy’s funeral

Fishing conditions have become increasingly difficult since my last update with water levels now at 12cms.

We have however managed to land 3 fish since my last update.

Peter Joyce managed to land his second fish of the week while fishing with Paul Duffy. The fish was taken in the Rock Pool and again on a Willie Gunn. It weighed in at 10lbs.

We then had 2 on Thursday off Finlough.

The first was taken by Paul Duffy and was well deserved as Paul doesn’t catch that many fish with us, so if any one deserved it he did. The fish weighed in at 12lbs12ozs with sea lice and was taken on a Willie Gunn.

Per Axman one of our Swedish party had a fish of 7lbs13ozs in the afternoon on a Sunrae Shadow.

Since then conditions have become increasingly difficult with not only low water levels but also winds becoming SE and squally.

Our new anglers coming in this week will have to concentrate more on the beauty of this place than the poor fishing conditions but here this can change at any time.
D.McEvoy.

As at time of writing we are still fishless. We had more rain on Sunday night so the river was actually up again yesterday morning to 65. It did however drop during the day as a result of which conditions were improving.

This resulted in us getting closer to that elusive first as we had a fresh fish lost in Morrisons in the afternoon.
Conditions as we speak are excellent so hopefully someone will be lucky before tomorrow evening.

If we don’t manage to land a February fish it will be the first time since 1986 that we have blanked.
Hopefully we’ll start to get fish soon and we’ll normal service will be resumed.

D.McEvoy