On Saturday night the presenter of the “Winning Streak” television program announced the five lucky contestants to take part in next week’s programme and everyone was delighted when Pat Hendrick was called out. Pat is from Shannonbridge and lives in Clonburren and the show organiser contacted Pat yesterday to confirm that he had been chosen and asked if he would attend the Studio in Dublin on Friday when the show will be recorded. Pat agreed and he will be allowed to bring along 22 family and friends for support. Already the whole area is thrilled that he was selected and hope he will be lucky on the night.

The group of five men from Sydney who were based in Shannonbridge for two weeks have departed. They attended many hurling and football games and rugby matches during their visit and one of them, a Mister Darcy was delighted to see Mel and Vinnie Darcy playing for Shannonbridge against Edenderry in the first game of this year’s championship.. Mister Spain wore a beard and told us that he has visited Ireland five times so far. Twice with the group of friends and three times with his family. Shannonbridge appears to be well centred as this group seemed to reach the four corners of Ireland during their visit.

Mister and Missus John Ford from Montana visited the area recently and stayed at Ely House. They told us that they winter in Mexico every year and haul their mobile home from Montana right down into Mexico, John was telling us about the Rodeos. One competition consists of two cowboys on horseback and one wild steer. The steer and one cowboy enter the arena together and this cowboy concentrates on lassoing the horns of the steer. The horse is specially trained to keep the steer in position when lassoed. The second cowboy enters the arena and he aims to lasso the steer by the hind legs. His horse is trained to keep the steer in position. The time it takes to carry out this exercise is just over Six Seconds,

Met a Swiss couple on a cruiser during the week who are spending a week in a cottage in the West of Ireland this week. They found they had to concentrate a bit too much when manoeuvring the boat and seemed to be looking forward to this week on dry land. They had a set of bicycles aboard and while they were in Shannonbridge they used them to visit Clonmacnois and the local Bog Rail Tour.

Philip Treacy is from Ahascragh and London and is a noted hat maker. He received an amount of publicity recently as he was commissioned to create many of the hats worn by Camellia and many of the guests at the recent Royal Wedding in England.

Another Ahascragh resident Tony Ellis was in Shannonbridge last week and I was delighted to join him on a visit to the Bog Lakes at Boora. We pulled in to see the fly fishing trout lake and saw that five fishermen were in action. There was an amount of fish rising but we only saw one fish being caught. The charge for fishing this lake is ten Euro per day for non members of the local club and five Euro per day for members. Permits and information and rules are available at Daly’s supermarket in Cloghan.

Afterwards we went to visit the two lakes at Boora driving past the pub and workshop.

One lake has wheelchair access and is stocked with tench and rudd, and for competitions farm trout are added. The other lake has tench.

We then visited the Finnamore Lakes with a sign posted access to the right about two miles past the Boora turn. The upper lake near the road has carp and tench . Finnamore Lower Lake is about a mile further in and has a finger of land in the middle with walkway access and is stocked with some decent bream. There is a map and information leaflet available. Some years ago some sculptors created a number of works which are on open display. I liked the ghost train which you can see hanging across the skyline when you visit Finnamore.

Redmond Kerins mentioned a book on the Kenny Family called Marathon Marriage which tells the history of the Kenny family from Banagher and is written by Michael Kenny. Must check with Shannonbridge Library on Thursday 7 to 9 pm to see if they have a copy.

Fishing on the Shannon at Shannonbridge on 14^th April Gunter Nanwelaers and Frans de Meulder from Belgium fished for pike using dead eel as bait and caught two fine pike weighing 20 Lbs and 22 Lbs which they described as two nice fish and which they released alive and well.

Yesterday 17^th April Horst and Elga Nagl went pike fishing on their cruiser at Shannonbridge and caught six pike in two hours. Fishing from 4.00 to 6.00 pm Horst had one pike measuring 80 cm and Elga his wife had five pike measuring 1 Metre, 90 cm, 80 cm, 60 cm and 50 cm. All fish were in fine condition and were weighed and returned alive. Horst first came on holiday on the River Shannon in 1970 with his parents and has returned every year since. This time he has a cruiser from Waveline. When he got the boat the Waveline people were telling him about a pike weighing over 34 Lbs which had been caught near Shannonbridge.