Rathcon Lake, Grangecon, Co. Wicklow

Today I decided to fish Rathcon Lake, as the weather was slightly cloudy with breaks of sunshine, about 13C with a light North Easterly wind.

Rathcon Lake is 8.5 acres and is stocked with top quality rainbow trout. The lake is fly fishing only and designed to allow maximum fishing so that 90% of the water can be covered. The average depth is 10ft with deep holes of up to 20ft in places, these depths can be found on peg 18 & 19. The fishery is open all year round and is home to a wide range of fly life, in particular buzzers, sedges, hawthorn and daddylonglegs, all providing excellent dry fly fishing, especially in the summer evenings.

On my arrival I had a chat with Dermot the fishery owner and manager. Dermot mentioned that the lake had been fishing well with a few double figures caught during the week on buzzers and damsels. Water temperature was quite cold.

As a matter of interest Dermot mentioned that he will be stocking the lake with steelhead trout. Steelhead trout are highly sought after by anglers because of their strong fighting abilities and once caught, will give anglers a run for their money putting up a good energitic fight, no matter what their size. There was no mention of when this would happen but it does sound like an exciting project for the future.

Leaving Dermot, I had a quick look round for activity and tackled up, setting up my usual two rods, one with a floating line, the other with a slow intermediate.. On the floating line I setup a buzzer under a dry fly..The intermediate was a buzzer under a orange nomad lure..

Having the lake practically to myself, I proceeded to Peg 19, after several casts of no action, I changed to a Di-5 with the same team and continued to fish...After a few follows I managed to hook the a nice fish of about 4lbs, carefully netting, unhooking, a quick photo, the fish was returned safely.

Catching a few fish on this peg caused quite a disturbance, so I decided to fish peg 13 & 14. Again a few takes on the nomad setup..

After mid day, several anglers were on site and fishing but there wasn't allot of fish been caught.

As mentioned above water temperatures are still quite cold at Rathcon and there was little or no surface activity.. 

I changed the Nomad to a Palmered Eyed Orange Dog Nobbler and I continued fishing.

I blanked on peg 8 and got two more fish on peg 10..