Biggest trout in 118 years caught in the west.
Excerpt from the Galway Advertiser – 31 May 2012
By Roisin Peddle
A giant trout weighing almost 24 pounds was caught on Lough Corrib last Saturday.
The ferox brown trout weighing 23lbs 12oz was landed near Inchagoill Island by Welsh photographer Ceri Jones.
Mr Jones, from Rhondda in Wales, had hooked the fish for about an hour before he managed to land it.
He is a freelance photographer with the British angling magazine Trout Fisherman and was visiting Galway as part of a press trip sponsored by Failte Ireland.
His work will feature in a series of articles on fishing on the west coast of Ireland, including Loughs Corrib, Carra, and Cullin.
Lough Corrib is one of the best wild brown trout fisheries in the world. The fish caught on Sunday was the biggest in over 100 years as the Irish record is still held by William Mears, who landed a brown trout weighing 26lbs 2oz from Lough Ennell in 1894. Ceri has been a regular visitor to Burkes Bar in Clonbur Co Galway since he first came to the village in 1987 and has a fish mounted in Burkes Bar which he caught last year which weighed in at 19lb-8oz.
It took Ceri just over 1 hour and 10 mins to land the monster fish and when asked how he felt about his achievement he smiled and said “I wonder if there is a bigger one out there.”