‘He had no luck’: First Irish Salmon of the year caught on Leitrim Lake

The first Salmon of 2026 was caught on Sunday on Leitrim’s Lough Melvin on the first day of the new fishing season.

The fish was hooked over the border on the Garrison side of the lake by local man Sean Maguire, a member of the Garrison and Lough Melvin Angling Association.

“It was nice to get the fish on the first day,“ he says. “Initially, I thought it might be a big trout of about five or six pounds, yanno, but then I saw the silver flash on the boat as he came in about 20-25 yards. I seen the silver flash and then I knew it was a fresh fish,” said Maguire.

Maguire has been fishing the waters for around 45 years, and this is not the first time he picked up the first fish, catching the first in the South in Rossinver and then later in Garrison in the North on the same day years ago, he says.

The fishing season opened in the south in January in Irish Rivers, but no Salmon were caught there yet. Sunday was the first day of the fishing season on Lough Melvin. 

“That fish hasn’t ever been got on the first day, for - if ever - I doubt it’s ever been got on the first day, maybe away back before I was fishing it was probably got, but since I started I don't think it was ever got on the first of February.”

He hadn’t planned on being out on the day but was dropping baits down to a couple of young lads on the Irish fly fishing team from the Garrison club and decided to head out himself.

“I said you know that would be a lovely day to be out, so I am going to go out as well just to get started,” he recalls.

He went out trowelling around 12:30, broke around lunch time and then headed back out when he wrangled the fish with a Yellow belly scotch minnow bait around 2:55.

The fish came in around seven pounds and put up a fight on the way in, but in the end, he came aboard with sea lice still on his side, meaning it was less than two days since he had come down from the Atlantic.

“He had no luck; he was nabbed fairly quickly,” says Maguire.

Word travels quickly among anglers, and Sean wasn’t long being told that when he got out of the water, that was the first Salmon of the year.

“I wasn’t really aware of it, I wasn’t sure, I wasn't sort of keeping in contact with anglers to see what was caught down the south … that was even better again.”