Stretton’s Shore on Lough Gowna

Angling’s “leap of faith” is gambling a whole day of your holiday on the advice of someone who pops up and whispers that Lough Ballygobackwards is the place to be.

I was covering the King of Clubs Angling festival last September on Corfree Shore when a man shuffled up to me and whispered: “I’ve found a new shoreline on the far side of Gowna where I fished all day and only caught bream – not a single roach!”
Now that is a massive declaration about Lough Gowna; a lake system so infested with roach and hybrids that the bream hardly get a chance to feed.
But this utterance came from Alan Smith who runs a B&B in Gowna and he is always out and about looking for new angling spots and from past successful ventures with him, it was certainly worth a punt.
“I’ll take you across in the boat tomorrow”, he promised.
So the next morning I was back on the bank with three angling friends taking a September break, Glenn and Colin Mitchell from Woking, Plus David Lowes from Warminster, waiting for Alan to finish taking King of Clubs matchmen to their flooded pegs on Corfree by boat.
Our fishing has to be fitted in between 10am and 3pm – not the best times for bream – but with Alan promising good sport in his matter-of-fact manner, the 30 minute sail was soon over as we glided onto a flat grassy bank.
I honestly don’t know the exact spot but we did pass Stretton’s Shore on the way.
“Fish from that bed of reeds to the point and you should do fine”, he shouted while pushing his 19ft angling boat back into the water. With a wave he was gone and the lads set about getting ready with feeder gear that only needed casting 40 metres, according to our guide’s advice.
It was an idyllic dream venue. The bank was flat, firm and spotlessly clean with not a sound to be heard; and few exploratory casts revealed a clean bottom with between four and five metres within an easy catch. But would this be another roach bash, or had Alan put us right?
Let me tell you; it was like winning the pools and the information was spot on and there were plenty of fish and all three men had catches between 30 and 40lbs in an absolutely superb setting.
There was no time to mess about so groundbait feeders caught all of the fish, though there was enough depth at 12 metres that perhaps the bream would come in and feed if there was a bit of a blow on the water.
You wouldn’t be interested in Ireland’s fishing unless you were already a serious angler so the basic facts will be enough.
To start we clipped on a large feeder before tying the hook length and dumped around a dozen helpings of groundbait that involved 50 per cent brown crumb our own favourite proprietary brands, plus bits of sweetcorn, caster and a few worms.
Fishing got underway with a medium size feeder and a longish tail (up to two metres) because of the flat conditions.
I started with two red maggots on a 16s hook and after a 15 minute wait for the first bite began to get a few skimmers. It was a slow start but the fish were there and it wasn’t until I worked through various combinations that included caster and worm, that sweetcorn became the obvious choice.
In the end I was offering two pieces of corn on a size 12 hook and although the wait was a little longer, the corn seemed to produce a slight better stamp of fish.
Halfway through the session the bites tapered off for no apparent reason so I took a gamble and changed back to a large feeder and dropped another quick 10 balls of groundbait into the swim. It worked a treat and with 20 minutes the bites became constant and the the last three casts included two 4lb bream.
It makes me wonder if the bites fell off as bigger fish moved into the peg?
Glenn got a roach on his first two casts, but apart from that it was mainly bream, some skimmers and few hybrids for a most enjoyable days sport and as session that we will all remember for a long time.