photography in ireland « Aisling Jennings Photography

: Dandelions – black and white

Dandelions – The dandelion is a perennial, herbaceous plant with long, lance-shaped leaves. They’re so deeply toothed, they gave the plant its name in Old French: Dent-de-lion means lion’s tooth in Old French.

They grow individually on hollow flower stalks 2 to 18″ tall. Each yellow flower head consists of hundreds of tiny ray flowers. Unlike other composites, there are no disk flowers.

The flower head can change into the familiar, white, globular seed head overnight. Each seed has a tiny parachute, to spread far and wide in the wind. The thick, brittle, beige, branching taproot grows up to 10″ long. All parts of this plant exude a white milky sap when broken.

These pictures show some of the fishing boats at Lough Cullen,Pontoon, Co. Mayo. Also some links, chains and up close shots to get a different look.

Lough Conn joins Lough Cullen at lovely Pontoon, which is famous for its salmon pool at Pontoon Bridge. Tucked away under the shadow of Nephin Mountains and surrounded by forests and sandy beaches and bays, Lough Conn extends nine miles from north to south and varies in width from two to six miles.

Trout fishing on Lough Cullen generally starts around the 17th March with the trout feeding voraciously on freshwater shrimp, snails and hoglice. Given some mild weather, large chironomids, colloquially known as duckfly appear. Trout feed on all stages of duckfly hatches.

Mayflies start appearing around the end of April and, from then to the end of June, some exciting fishing can be had. All Mayfly patterns fished wet work well and some excellend sport can be enjoyed with dry patterns. From 1st July to the end of the season, very little fishing is carried out on Cullen because of the weed and algae growth due to enrichment.