Dungonnell.
Click on the photo above for a larger view of the lough.
At long last, the Dungonnell page. As you can see Dungonnell is, for me, a body of water on the north east coast of Ireland. My particular interest is that this body of water contains a few small trout. Now I know that is not something likely to attract crowds of people but I like the peace and quiet and enjoy the fishing. Now it must be said that the fish are very small indeed. In the past they were better but my theory is that the Water works people poured a lot of aluminium sulphate into the water and so did considerable damage to the fish. It is possible that this is not the case but I have a bad feeling that it is true. They also expect people to drink this water, as it is a reservoir. Please take great note: there are no fish in the lough of takeable size so if you want to kill fish then go somewhere else. Also, they are not always so very easy to catch!
I am quite a regular visitor to Dungonnell as during the season I go to fish and out of season I would occasionally drop by just for the walk. With this in mind I thought it might be fun to put up a page and relate tales of my visits and the condition of the water and the countryside surrounding it. I don't have any clear reason for this and certainly have no target in doing it but I thought that some folks might find it interesting to chart the life of a lough. I usually fish barbless as the fish are all very small and have to be put back. Most fish in the lough behave like wild trout, though I suspect that the majority are now grown on from the introduced fingerlings, so it is nice to have somewhere to fish for nearly wild trout even if they are small. All the other easily accessible stillwaters in the area are stocked with fish of takeable size and so work, to a greater or lesser extent, as put and take waters.
As you can see in the photo above the lough is impounded at one end by a dam wall. From looking at the "dry" side of the wall I have concluded that at it's deepest point the lough must reach about 35 feet. There are, however, many quite shallow areas which were uncovered during the very dry summer of 1995. Seeing the lough with the "tide out" was most interesting and provided me with useful clues and information as to why fish are found where they are. I suspect that the area of the lough is about 90 acres and the dam wall is at the south west while the top end of the lough is north east. Needless to say this is very general as the lough has a kink in the middle.
As can be seen in the photo above the lough is surrounded by hills covered with rough vegetation. The vegetation is mostly heather or very coarse grass. All this sits on peat and so neither the lough nor the surrounding land are very productive.
At present it is my plan to index this page by my visits to the lough. This isn't going to be rocket science but hopefully someone out there will enjoy it.
Even if you know what the lough looks like and how it behaves I still haven't given you much clue as to what to tie on the end of your line. To make up for this I have decided to give lucky readers a look inside my secret fly boxes. You will find, though, that there is nothing at all exciting in there but I hope you find it interesting anyhow.
General lough fishing and tactics.
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