![]() ![]() With so much water to choose from, many venues are virtually unfished and all are surrounded by the stunning Lakelands landscape of rolling hills and forests.Īlong with the traditional Irish species, tench and rudd are present in many of the lakes plus there are some carp present in certain areas. The Lakelands district is host to dozens of lakes, loughs, canals along with the famous Shannon navigation system, and is an angler’s paradise with unspoilt lakes full of hard-fighting fish. Fishing at medium range, the action came steadily throughout their stay. The pair used traditional feeder tactics with chopped worm, maggots, casters and corn as bait along with a good helping of ground bait fed through the feeders. All-in-all, it’s been a great trip and I can’t wait for everyone to see how our adventure unfolded when the new season of Fishing Gurus airs.” “The all-out bream session was an eye opener too – I’ve never seen someone backwind with a bream but these Irish fish are a different breed and Pemb and Steve caught some cracking examples of the famous Shannon system slabs. “Fishing-wise, the highlights have been seeing Steve and Pemb catch 150lb of hybrids, bream and skimmers in a day – the fish were all in beautiful condition and fought like tigers. But I have to say I loved playing captain best of all!” Simms says that the species went extinct in Ireland about 10,500 years ago but managed to hold on in Siberia until about 6,500 years ago.Ĭurrently, the plans for the antlers are unclear, and McElroy is keeping the massive skull in his garage.The Tackle Guru team have hit the road – and sea! - in search of the best coarse fishing sport in the world, with Dean Macey, Steve Ringer and Pemb Wrighting spending the week tackling Ireland’s bream and silvers in the stunning Lakelands district.įilming a new series of the Sky Sports series - the sister show to Korda’s Thinking Tackle - the team spent the week touring various lakes and loughs, catching big bags of bream, hybrids, roach and perch on feeder tactics and enjoying the local hospitality.īig Fish Off star Dean Macey, who was on presenting duties with Pemb and Steve behind the rods as well as captaining the Stenna Line ferry across the Irish Sea, said: “We’ve had a great time in the Lakelands – the fishing has been amazing and the scenery even better, and we’ve enjoyed some great Irish craic along the way. Environmental change is what caused their extinction.” “Giant antlers aren’t great in the forest. “They came in when the weather was great on the grass plains, but then the trees started to grow,” he says. Mike Simms at the Ulster Museum tells Shauna Corr at Belfast Live that the Great Elk was well-suited to the early Pleistocene when Europe was full of grassy plains, but when the last glaciers receded and the habitat changed, the elk couldn’t cope. The remains of the Great Elk was one of the animals used by French scientist Georges Cuvier to show that extinction did in fact take place. Fossils, they believed, were just the remains of animals that explorers would eventually find somewhere hidden on Earth. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many scientists believed that the extinction of animals was impossible. The reason it is associated with Ireland is because intact fossils of the giant beast are sometimes found in lake beds and bogs on the island, which are especially good at preserving the bones. And it’s not Irish according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the species actually roamed all of Europe, north Africa, northern Asia and a related species lived in China. It’s not an elk, but a huge deer species-some individuals had antlers up to 12 feet wide. The Great Elk, also known as the Irish Elk, has a misleading name. Luckily, however, McElroy knew just what the skull was since a huge jawbone from one of the elk-and possibly from the same animal-was fished up from the area in 2014, also making the local news. “I thought it was the devil himself,” Coyle tells McGreevy. More impressive, however, are its antlers, which in this case were also over 6 feet wide. This particular great elk probably stood 6.5 feet tall at the shoulders. The fisherman landed the massive skull of a Great Elk ( Megaloceros giganteus ), the largest deer species to ever exist which died out in Ireland about 10,500 years ago. But Ronan McGreevy at The Irish Times reports what they pulled up wasn’t wood, it was bone. It would barely budge, so they assumed it was caught on a piece of driftwood. Last week, fishermen Raymond McElroy and Charlie Coyle were out on Lough Neagh, a lake near the town of Ardboe in northern Ireland, when they tried to pull up one of their nets. ![]()
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