The wild trout season closed, autumn arrived and gave us good conditions to fly fish for pike. My favourite estate lake duly obliged and produced fish of more than 20lb for myself and guiding clients. This was a distinct improvement on last year when rainfall of biblical proportions produced floods and heavily coloured water.

After a couple of weeks of consistent and productive fishing, it was time to head west to Fishguard, board the Stena Europe and cross to Ireland. We were to film on Lough Corrib at the start of the trip with Andy Bowman as my boat partner. I was then due to host a few chaps from England. As always, it was a pleasure to fish with Andy (and to demolish too much malt whiskey in the evenings!)

Lough Corrib is an impressive water. I’m sure that many of you will have enjoyed the legendary Mayfly fishing for its superb brown trout. Perhaps less well known is that the lough is also home to splendid powerhouse pike. It’s not a place to treat casually. On a wild day it can kick up very rough. The lough is on an altogether different scale from an English trout reservoir and there are frequent outcrops of rocks lurking below the surface. I can’t overstress the need for expert local knowledge and an experienced guide.

We were booked into Portarra Lodge which was able to supply us with proper 'lough style' boats. Our host, Michael Canney knows the water extremely well and is a valuable source of help and information.

The fishing wasn’t frantic but did consistently produce good pike with everyone landing a fish approaching 20lb. Reuben Hewitt’s fantastic specimen of 31lb 12oz (right) was the highlight of the visit and emphasised the enormous potential of this famous limestone lough. Interestingly, we fly fishers caught noticeably more pike than a group of lure anglers who were staying at the lodge at the same time.

The pike are no longer subject to the insane culling process that used to prevail. Hopefully, this will result in more fly fishers from Great Britain and Europe coming to experience the thrills that the dramatically hard fighting pike provide. I will be back in a couple of weeks.

I lost a huge fish on this trip. I know precisely where she lives and I’m looking forward to watching my backing fizz through the rod-rings again. I’ll keep you posted.