Everybody agrees; anglers, gardeners, your granny, the cat, the dog - This has been the driest spring anyone can remember. Three months with hardly a drop of the wet stuff is truly remarkable. The climate lurches between extremes now, almost as if the planet is angry and firing warning shots across our bows. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 itself might well be a symptom of excessive messing about with the environment. "Time to put the house in order," says the world.
Anyway, closer to home, the lack of water has been noticeable in the river, with some sections being reduced to a trickle. Nevertheless, there have been good hatches of flies and decent trout continue to be caught if time and place are carefully chosen. Things improved slightly in the last couple of days after some welcome showers which freshened the river up a bit.
With lockdown easing and travel restrictions lifting, I took a trip to Killylane Reservoir to check the conditions there. I found myself standing on the lake bed looking up at a rock ledge that I like to fish from and is usually at water level; but was now high and dry above my head. There was little activity on the surface, and the few trout I saw looked distinctly sluggish. The surface water seemed quite warm to the touch, which made me suspect that dissolved oxygen might be low, causing the fish to stay in the cooler depths.
