
Trout fishing the Irish way means fishing in loughs (lakes). It’s an experience you’ll never forget – Hudson photo.
How two fly fishers from the southeastern United States discovered the magic of trout fishing Ireland style
Steve Hudson, founder of FlyBooks.net, has enjoyed fly fishing, fly tying, hiking, and the great outdoors since he was a child. The author of more than 30 books and thousands of articles, he knows how important it is to have great how-to books, accurate destination guides, and clear and readable instructional material. That’s what you will find in every FlyBooks publication, too, and Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.
By Steve Hudson, field editor
It’s 9 a.m. in Southwest Ireland (that’s the wee small hours of the morning back home in Georgia), and once again, we’re driving on the other side of the road on a narrow, winding byway through the Irish countryside.
We’ve done that before, you know. Do you have any idea how stressful it is to drive on the other side of the road?
And yet the excitement of fishing trumps stress every time. At least until… Ahead of us, coming our way is a tractor – a big and rumbly green farm tractor of biblical proportions. We’ve got to pass it, but the road is barely wide enough for just our
car.
Heart rates rise. Muscles tense
And then the magic of Ireland does its thing yet again, and we pass, unscathed, with perhaps a millimeter of air between our little red car and the towering, car-eating beast of a machine that’s headed the other way. Just like that, the road ahead is clear again.
“That was intense,” my wife says, slowly easing her grip on the wheel, and then she adds, “I hope this fishing is good.”
Ahhh – fishing in Ireland!
I’m sure that the fishing (like this driving) will be much different from what we were used to back home, but we are about to find out just how different (and how unforgettable) it can be.

According to the website fishinginireland.info, the star of the Irish trout fishing scene is the brown trout – “the most widely distributed freshwater fish in Ireland.” There is nothing even faintly artificial about those trout, either. They thrive across Ireland in tens of thousands of kilometers of rivers and feeder streams. Ireland also offers more than a half million acres of loughs (lakes), providing even more opportunities to encounter wild, native browns—Hudson photo.
And what about those fish?
In the loughs, most range up to 12 or 14 inches. They’re beautifully colored fish that are a delight on the fly rod. But each year, fish of up to 10
pounds or more are brought to net. The official record for a brown trout from a lough, a record which has stood since 1894, is a 26 lb. 2 oz. giant from Lough Ennell. The river record is a little smaller – a 20-pound fish from the River Shannon landed in 1957.
Size notwithstanding, I like the way they put it in “Trout Angling on Irish Loughs,” a neat little brochure from the fishinginireland.info site. “Ireland offers the essence of the [trout fishing] sport,” the brochure says, ”the pursuit of wild trout taking hatching flies in natural
waters.” And that’s exactly what we wanted to experience – but the Irish way, of course.
The question, of course, was how and where to start – and the answer was just a few keystrokes away. You see, while exploring the Inland Fisheries Ireland website, I found a place to ask questions.
So I did
“My wife and I would love to do some fishing while we are visiting your country,” I wrote, “but we don’t have a clue where to start. Can you help?” I’m not too confident in the efficacy of “ask your question here” spaces on websites, and I didn’t really expect to hear anything back. But I was in for a most pleasant surprise. Pretty soon, here comes a very welcoming email from Paul O’Reilly, one of the Inland Fisheries Ireland’s angling advisors.
Ireland’s angling advisors
Well! This was certainly getting off to a good start. Here, it seemed, were folks willing to help us enjoy a fishery that was foreign to us but that they knew so well – despite the fact that they knew us not at all. There was no hint of “I-know-but-I’m-not-gonna-tell- you.” There was only a willingness to help. It sure was a fine thing to see.

Derek Mulcahy, secretary of the Beara Trout Anglers and a former Irish national fly fishing team member-Hudson photo.
As Paul and I corresponded over the next few weeks, I started to get a sense of the kind of fishing that was waiting in the wings. Stream fishing, I’d written to him, was what we knew and understood. It’s what was most familiar to us. But I’d also said that we wanted to experience fly fishing for trout the Irish way.
Paul understood
“I know you are keen to fish on some streams,” he wrote at one point. “But in Ireland, you have to try fishing on the loughs – it’s what we do!”
So that settled it. We would be focusing our fishing on lakes, enjoying a kind of trout fishing akin to exploring terra incognita in its most concentrated form for my wife and me. Whereas trout fishing back home in the southern Appalachians usually meant wading creeks and streams, in Ireland, we would be fishing for trout in natural lakes that might be miles across, which had been there since the Ice Age.
Since Paul was based some distance from where we planned to lodge, he offered to connect us with someone closer by. That’s how we came to meet Derek Mulcahy, fly fisher extraordinaire.
Derek, truly a master of the art of fly fishing for Irish browns, is secretary of the Beara Trout Anglers (a fisher – and conservation-minded club) and a former member of the Irish national fly fishing team. The first water he suggests for us to fish – Lough Glenbeg, on southwest Ireland’s Beara Peninsula – is one of the loughs his club leases and knows well.
One of the greatest things about the worldwide fly-fishing community is that most of its members are exceptionally cordial and willing to share their knowledge.
Derek certainly is
Derek, his wife, Sinead, and their two children live in Ardgroom, a small village about halfway between our cottage and Lough Glenbeg. We first met him at a small store in the village, where we shared coffee and hot chocolate and purchased the permits we’d need to fish in Lough Glenbeg – and that was the beginning of one of the most unforgettable fishing experiences we will ever have.

Ireland’s loughs can be fished by wading, as in Lough Glenbeg, or from a boat (more on that in part two)-Hudson photo.
NOTE: Featured Image by Timothy Knepp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
IN PART 2: The Trout of Lough Glenbeg