The fishing's good on the River Erne

The fishing on the entire Erne catchment including the river Erne at Belturbet is excellent and there is also a great stock of trout and tench. This news was revealed this week by Michael Fitzpatrick, inspector with the Northern Regional Fisheries Board. A programme featuring the excellent flying pike fishing in County Cavan is soon to be featured on French television. He told The Anglo-Celt that different events were staged as part of fishery awareness week both locally and nationally. It was sponsored by the Regional and Central Fisheries Boards. When The Anglo Celt dropped in on the Belturbet event on Saturday on the banks of the river Erne a fly fishing and fly tying event was in full flight. Simultaneously a junior pike angling competition was taking place in North Longford on Gortamone lake. The board will also be sponsoring a coarse angling competition in Killeshandra and fishery education sessions are also taking place in the Hotel Kilmore and there is one being staged on this Saturday. There will be a coarse angling demonstration this Thursday on the Town Lake in Killeshandra and there will be a marquee with audio visual demonstrations and fishery information. Michael Fitzpatrick said that fishing clubs in this part of the country are doing their best to foster an interest in angling with efforts to attract more young people to the sport. The Belturbet club sponsored fly tying lessons and both the North Longford Anglers and the Killeshandra Coarse Angling clubs have very active junior sections. More people are fishing on man-made fisheries in the UK. "They are now not really equipped to come over here and exploit our natural fisheries to the fullest," explained Mr. Fitzpatrick. Those who do come over here to fish are getting excellent results and the fishing has been very good so far this year. Some parties from the continent recently caught 40 pike in one day and some were specialising in fly fishing for pike. "This is a new trend and we are trying to encourage it," said Mr. Fitzpatrick. "We have done a programme for French television and that programme will soon be shown to French viewers. It exclusively features fly fishing for pike in County Cavan," he said. The current law limits an angler to just one pike per day and it also imposes a possession limit of one pike at any given time and that pike can't be any larger than 50 centimetres. More pike are actually returned back to the water live these days than are taken away. These laws were reduced to put a stop to the practice of people leaving the country with dozens of pike. Water in good condition "We are looking out here at the river Erne and you can see a carpet of white flowers on the rocks in the river. The common name for the flowers is water buttercup (Ranunclus) and it is a positive sign in a river and is an ideal habitat for the invertebrates that fish feed on," outlined the inspector. Mr. Fitzpatrick said there is a very healthy stock of coarse fish in the rivers and lakes and there is a good stock of trout as well. Tench are now widespread in the Erne catchment area, including the main river Erne. A lot of tench were caught in Belturbet last week. Meanwhile, Belturbet man Martin Rowan is looking forward to a trip to Buckinghamshire with the Recreation Ireland Angling team, which includes people with disabilities. One man on the team is blind and another has just one arm. Martin has been fishing for over 50 years.