With the trial for the Ladies Irish Team coming up on Lough Lene and Bri giving the Lexus Individuals a miss, me and him decided a trip down to Lene for a bit of a recce and some fishing would be nice. I did the organising and Bri tied a few flies and got the fishing gear ready. We arrived a bit late on the Sunday morning but we met up with Tommy and had a bit of craic and got fixed up with a nice big Sheelin boat and we were on our way. With it being Bri’s first time on Lene he wanted to have a scoot about and see the Lough so we stopped here and there and had a few casts and just kept moving really as it’s a fairly big place, taking a mental note of where we’d seen fish for the next day. We had a couple of fish, lost a couple and missed a few but mainly enjoyed exploring a new place. It was a few years from I fished there.

After the fishing we went back to the hotel in Castlepollard, got scrubbed up and went for something to eat, apparently Bri thinks the chippy counts as a going out for a meal, but I set him straight and we went to the hotel and got our eyes taken out for a meal and drinks, its bloody expensive down south.

The second day we were up and ready to go back to two places where we’d seen fish, and we decided to start in one place in particular where there seemed to be some big fish among them. This turned out to be right as on the first drift Bri took a fish on a coral blob that ran him all over the place, it turned out to be a lovely resident fish with full fins that weighed just over 4lb, as he was getting sorted and ready to re-cast I hooked into a nice fish on a booby that gave me the run around as well, again this turned out to be another good fish around the 4lb mark.
We chopped and changed tactics, Bri was fishing nymphs and buzzers for a while with no success and I changed over to more traditional Irish flies. I hooked and landed a nice brownie of about 2lb and rose another couple of fish, at this point we reluctantly decided to leave the big fish alone and try the other parts of the Lough we hadn’t fished yet.

Bri wanted to go to a bay that we’d seen a few boats in the day before so we motored over there and started another drift. Again straight away we were into fish although these were a lot smaller in size, I caught a couple on the Irish flies and Bri was rising and catching a few on dries. We had a few drifts here and one of us would get a fish or a rise on each drift, as we were going to motor round to do another drift though Bri couldn’t get the engine to engage either forward or reverse. After a lot of messing about and foul language the engine finally went into forward so we decided not to risk it and just head in cutting our day short slightly but saving a long row back and we’d had a good day anyway.

We really enjoyed the trip to Lene, it’s a lovely place with very hard fighting fish and friendly locals.

A good report Linda ,hopefully the lough will fish aswell on the 26th for the Irish FFF get together ,if you would like to PM and let me know the areas and flies that fished well it would be great ,I will be giving the swift mk2 and marksman drifter there first trials that weekend

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Come when the leaves come,angle with me,Come when the bees hum,crossing the lea,Come to discover the angling delights,of the Melvin with me.

well done linda, so you finally realised that its pretty expensive down here!!!!!,
dont buy tackle down here or you will age and be old and bent over by the time you get home,lol
lene is a nice lough cracking fish and a peaceful and tranquil area,
best of luck in the ladies, is mary harkin fishing it this year

liam