Kylemore Abbey Fishery.Overall Season Report 2007.

High expectations for this past season were to be the norm with the eventual ban imposed on drift netting. The season was slow to start with our first fish not landed until the middle of May (our average date for the first fish now stands at 14 th April) from whereon angling was reasonably consistent until the start of July when numbers of fish entering, showed a marked improvement over the years drift netting was permitted. The sizes and condition of our fish were marginally higher than other years and all but two fish this season were clear of any damage akin to net struggles. However, with all the good news, the angling was poor in June and greater numbers of fish now arrive in July and August, with these two months now producing 75% of the total catch against an average of 59% over the previous five years.

We did not witness very many of the undernourished grilse that 2006 produced in fact, only five fish this year weighed in at 2lb or under. One reasonably new phenomenon, on this fishery, and indeed seen throughout other fisheries were fish entering with bleeding anal vents and in fairly prolific numbers. This has been put down to small roundworms, Anasakis Simplex, commonly found in wild fish or the dreaded 'Global Warming' which has allowed larger numbers of parasitic worms to flourish amongst shrimp species in the warming waters of the feeding grounds.

For the 2007 season the Kylemore Abbey section of the fishery produced 137 Salmon/Grilse which does not seem a great improvement on the 119 of 2006. It must be stressed that numbers of fish caught in 2003 (72) was our poorest on record and as the ‘07 fish would be resultant of the incoming ‘03 stock; it did not surprise us that figures would be down accordingly. This combined with a pitiful catch and release rate during the ‘03 season of just 11% would automatically have an effect on returning numbers.

Major changes over the years, for the better, with regard to peoples attitude towards catch and release will ultimately have greater impact on the future returning stocks and it is now showing that between 2003-2007 the rate of release on this fishery has risen from 11% to a staggering 64%. Many factors have helped this improvement, both mandatory catch and release regulations but more so the willingness of our anglers to comply with our 'one only' per day rule and good the foresight on their behalf.

Overall with regard to the Salmon catch this year, we ended up 15% on 2006 and up 54% on the five year average between 02-06 whilst drift netting was in operation. To some the Salmon catch may seem small but when it is put into prospective against the angling effort, we hold our own with a handsome .40 Salmon/Angler/Day. We are not heavily fished and there are not many small fisheries that can boast returns of this caliber.

These Salmon figures do not include the catches on the Upper Lake where the fishery is under shared ownership and similarly, here, major improvements have been witnessed for this 2007 season.

The average weight of Salmon has also risen accordingly from 3.6lb '06 to 4.3lb '07. This was to be expected as most of the larger fish had been filtered out of the equation in times past.

Sea Trout numbers were reasonable, only the lack of Sea Trout anglers dampened our catch numbers. Our total of 314 for the season was well up on last year (248) and when angling pressure at the height of the season required anglers to fish both lake and river on a half-day rotational basis, anglers were well rewarded for their lake efforts. Again, presumably due to the lack of drift netting, we witnessed a much greater number of Sea Trout reaching the 2-3lb target, with a few over the 3lb, which we used to see regularly in seasons past.

Spawning this winter should be very good with the larger numbers of fish available, and it will be interesting to see if spawning areas that have been barren previous years, get the due attention from this year's stock.

Catch reports 2006

Catch reports 2005

Bookings for next season can be made from our bookings page.
Why not try for a summer grilse, there are indications that there may be a good run next seasson.

Some successful flies.