A friendly club match has seen some staggering bags of bream, roach and hybrids caught from one of Ireland’s best-known river systems.
Members of Carlow Coarse Angling Club fished the canal section of the river Barrow near Athy, putting together silver fish bags to nearly 70lb. Fishing simple tactics with bread and hemp, anglers experienced what some described as the ‘best fishing of their lives’ with number of specimen roach to 2lb and hybrids to 4lb also coming to the net.
“It was unbelievable fishing, the roach sport here is getting better every year,” said CCAC member and local fishing guide Gerry McStraw. “The average stamp of the roach was great, with a few bigger specimens showing up, as well as the odd hybrid to get the weights up.
“We were just fishing bread with hemp as we haven’t had access to any caster. But if someone came down with a gallon or so of them they would just clean up, I’d hate the think what weights they could take.”
The quality of the fishing on the Barrow system at the moment bodes well for upcoming international qualifiers to be held further down river at Carlow in April. The event will see the best anglers from across Ireland descend on the river to fish for their place in the 2013 Irish squad, with some very big weights expected over the two day event.
The best weight of the day was amassed by angler Paul McLaughlin totaling 69lb!
Weight are made up mainly of roach, with a high average stamp of quality fish.
