Angling in Clare

TRADITIONAL Irish lake fishing is still very much available in County Clare, though these days you’ll have to put up with roach-packed waters to sort out the big bream and tench.  Take a peep at a map of Ireland and find Clare – a county of rich wooded land, water and music – covering the area between Lough Derg and the Atlantic from Limerick to Galway. And the coarse fishing lake district is concentrated between the villages of Broadford, Scarriff and Feakle.

They are lakes of all shapes and sizes with the common factor being tench, bream, rudd, hybrids, pike and perch; along with the legion of roach that has invaded most fisheries in Ireland.  Yet they remain traditional in as much as there is rarely any angling pressure on any of the waters and if you make it to the waterside as the morning mists still hangs above the lake, you will enjoy the emotion of being the first man to have trodden the bank.

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