Iascnamacnateery — the name maps the territory exactly, as Irish names tend to. An upper lough in the Waterville/Currane system, holding sea trout and salmon on their migratory circuit. Access here is unconfirmed and local knowledge is essential — the kind of water that rewards the angler who makes the right enquiries before leaving home. For 2026 this remains an open fishery — salmon may be retained in season under the Wild Salmon & Sea Trout Tagging Scheme and bag limits, with catch-and-release at other times.
Iskanamacteery is one of the upper loughs of the great Waterville system in south Kerry — the chain of lakes north-east of Lough Currane, strung together by the Cummeragh and Owengarriff rivers across the Old Red Sandstone country beneath the MacGillycuddy hills. It is wild, remote, peat-fringed water, clear and soft off the sandstone-and-bog catchment, lying among the others — Cloonaghlin, Namona, Derriana — that feed the Currane and the sea. Famous above all for its sea trout, the system takes fish up into the higher loughs when the rivers run full and in flood, with salmon moving through on the high water. The character is upland lough country — shallow rocky margins, sandstone shoals and bog-stained bays, best fished from a drifting boat to the wave. Wading the linking streams is steady on firm rock; the loughs are boat water read by their lies and inflows.
Wading: Exposed upland lough, boat water
No venue-specific hatch data yet; as an oligotrophic upland lough in this Cork/Kerry sandstone-freestone system, expect the typical acid-water stillwater character of sparse buzzer and sedge emergence with occasional terrestrial fall — treat this as a general expectation, not an observed hatch.
- Lough system
- Sandstone
- Unconfined
- Stillwater
- Lough