Ireland on the Fly

Stan Headley is a fly angler and fly tyer who would be known to so many people in Ireland and the UK. A regular contributor to Trout & Salmon magazine down through the years, the Orkney angler also penned three books - The Loch Fishers Bible, Trout & Salmon Flies of Scotland and Reflections on the Loch which became the go to source for Scottish lochs' fishing – but he was also a fan of fishing in...

This week we’re delighted to bring you our first episode from the river bank. Only a few days ago Daire was lucky enough to fish the Slaney River for the first time on the Ballycarney Fishery beats in the company of the fishery manager, Peter Wadding. Spring salmon fishing on the Slaney has been on our bucket list for a while now and although Daire travelled in hope rather than expectation, things...

This week it’s a book club episode with Patsy Peril, who co-wrote (with Deirdre Nuttall) ‘Swimming Upstream: one man’s fight to save the Atlantic salmon’. It’s a fascinating memoir about the life of a netsman on the River Shannon. Patsy talks to us about the importance of the salmon to the communities and villages along the Shannon and how the building of Ardnacrusha decimated a way of life for so...

He’s The Scientific Angler on YouTube whose videos of Corrib, Arrow and Sheelin show brown trout fishing in Ireland at its best, but what’s also great about Ronan McWilliams’ fly fishing videos is his honesty. He’s not afraid to say when he’s blanked and when he’s found it tough – authenticity as he says is what it’s all about. Ronan also tells us about the mystique of the Blue Stacks in Donegal a...

Education about and local engagement with rivers and water catchments are vital for empowering communities, kids and parents to be custodians of their local environments and one group that has been doing fantastic work in this area since the 1990s has been Streamscapes. It came about after Paul Kearney and Mark Boyden set up the Coomhola Salmon Trust in West Cork in 1989 and evolved then into Stre...

George McGrath is well known to listeners of the Ireland on the Fly podcast, a friend of the show he has joined us on numerous occasions. If you have listened to him before you will no doubt be aware that he and Tom Doc will at times, break out into speaking Irish. George has a great love for the Irish language and is a fluent speaker and Tom, hailing from Joyce Country, is fluent as well. It was...

This week we’re joined by Evo Smyth, originally from Latvia, but living and fly fishing in the Irish midlands for the last twenty years. Although only taking up fly tying ten years ago, Evo quickly made a name for himself as a fly tyer of some skill and his flies have been in demand around the country. Evo tell us about his fly fishing and fly tying journey and has some really helpful and insightf...

Spring is in the air and it feels like the season is finally starting to click into gear and for many salmon anglers you’ll be thinking of trips to book and plans to make. But one of the big issues affecting wild salmon and sea trout numbers is the presence of salmon farms in some of the most pristine locations around our Atlantic coast. The issue of salmon farming is something we continually cove...

This week we’re finding out about a fly fishing club that bucks the trend and continues to grow its membership in the face of declining interest in the sport. Kilbride Anglers Club has long been an innovative and forward thinking club since it was first founded in 1940 and its chairman Martin Kearney joins us on this week’s episode to tell us how the club expanded beyond its Liffey waters to the M...

This week it’s a fly tying book club special with Barry Ord Clarke aka The Feather Bender. Barry’s new book, Advanced Fly Tying Techniques has just been released and is a must-read for anyone looking to develop their fly tying skills further. We spoke to Barry about his incredible fly tying career, his hugely successful YouTube channel and his unusual introduction to learning to tie flies. Listen...

It’s a first for us I believe on this week’s episode as we speak to Ulster man Willie Holmes from the fishing shop he manages by the Ch’illiwack river outside Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada. Willie was originally a building contractor who then set up and ran the well known Moorbrook trout fishery in Coleraine before making the leap and moving to Vancouver full time where he now gets to fl...

While we’re into February and slowly the season is beginning to come to life, you may not have much of a chance to wet a line in the coming weeks so have you thought about building your own fly rod? Brian Martin is a Fermanagh angler based in Galway who last year set himself the goal of doing just that and as he explains on this week’s Ireland on the Fly, it’s actually not that difficult and he en...

You may have seen the report recently about a tagged salmon that was detected in the Erriff and was subsequently discovered to have travelled nearly 2,500km from south west Greenland. It’s incredible and direct evidence showing the journey that the Atlantic salmon has to endure to spawn in our rivers and so to find out more we spoke to the IFI’s Glen Wightman who told us about the discovery and wh...

Sally Barnes is a remarkable woman who has been at the forefront of the Irish artisan food revolution since the 1980s, when she first started smoking wild salmon. But what has a smoker got to do with fly fishing? Sally, who has been married to a fisherman, and lives on the west Cork coast, has seen and experienced first-hand the decline the Atlantic salmon has undergone in modern times. Sally’s st...

This week we’re finding out about the unique and special Lough Carra, renowned for its marl bottom which gave the water an alluring blue and aquamarine appearance. Not only that but the fishing – and mayfly fishing especially – was pretty spectacular. But like so many things in nature, Lough Carra went into decline due to eutrophication. However, the Lough has many interested stakeholders, not lea...

Happy New Year to you all and we’re into the start of another year and another season which can only mean one thing and that’s catching up with Shane Gallagher from the Drowes Fishery to find out how the opening days went on the river. Shane also looks back on the 2024 season, discusses the fall off in the spring run and why 2025 just might be a year to be hopeful. Listen & follow on Apple or Spot...

Newfoundland might be a couple of thousand miles from Ireland but the Irish influence is a strong one in the most eastern part of Canada in terms of people, culture, language and fly fishing. Jamie Pike is a Newfoundlander of Irish descent who is a passionate salmon angler and professional fly tyer and he visited these shores for the first time to tie at the recent Irish Fly Fair. We caught up wit...

‘It’s been the strangest of seasons,’ George McGrath tells us on this week’s Ireland on the Fly.  George is a friend of the show and well-known fly angler based in Tipperary on the River Suir.  We’ve spoken to George previously about the nitrification of his stretch of the river that has seen it clogged with weeds during the summer making it all but unfishable. But now, it’s so bad on the water, G...

It might be the off-season for many of us, but have you considered grayling fishing in the UK at this time of year? Known as the Lady of the Stream, the grayling are best fished for in winter time and Mark Driver, one half of Piscari Fly, has plenty of experience fishing for them in Wales in the winter months and he joins us on this week’s Ireland on the Fly to give us the ins and outs of where an...

We’ve already released our river trout and salmon reviews of the season so now it’s time for this week's Ireland on the Fly episode focusing on Corrib, Sheelin, Melvin, Arrow and other loughs. We spoke to Eamonn Ross and Mike Keady to find out how the fishing went throughout the season and what key learnings there were from the difficult conditions at times during the year. Listen & follow on Appl...

It’s time for our salmon review of the season and who better to talk to than one of the most knowledgeable salmon anglers we know, Paddy McDonnell. Paddy gives us an excellent run through of the season on the Moy, as well as the Owenduff, Owenmore and Carraghmore, plus we get into seal predation, coping with the conditions, the place and importance of the salmon in Irish culture and the vexed ques...

We’ve got the first of our season review episodes this week and we’re focusing on river brown trout with River Nore guide, Dan O’Neill, who gives us the lowdown on his local river as well as those nearby including the Kings and the Suir.   Dan will be telling us about conditions throughout the year, hatches and of course some of the fish highlights as well…. Thanks also to everyone who entered the...

We’re into October, the nights are closing in, and for some of you, pike fishing awaits, or evenings fly tying at the vice. But the off season also means the Irish Fly Fair in November and this week’s guest is Darryl Mooney who tells us about his involvement as the fly manager and some of the incredible fly tyers who will be jetting in from around the world. And we have two tickets to give away to...

It was very saddening to hear the news that John Gierach, the world famous and beloved fly fishing writer, has passed away at the age of 78.He was a huge inspiration to us here on Ireland on the Fly for his books, personality, style and approach to fly fishing as well as life.  There was much we could all learn from him. And so, in honour of the late, great John Gierach, we remember him with a rep...

So, that’s pretty much it for the season for brown trout, sea trout and salmon fly anglers.  Currane, Sheelin and a few other lakes are still open until October 12th but for the vast majority of you the rods are being put away for the winter. Over the coming weeks we’ll be reviewing how the season went on the rivers and loughs around Ireland for salmon and brown trout so stay tuned for those episo...