The river and the callows
The Little Brosna (Irish: An Bhrosnach Bheag) rises near Dunkerrin in County Offaly and runs 57.6 km – nearly 36 miles – to the River Shannon at Victoria Lock, opposite Meelick, forming the boundary between Offaly and County Tipperary for much of that distance. It is a limestone river: clear, alkaline water over gravel. For most of the year it is a modest thing to look at, and its interest sits at the two ends of the calendar.
In a wet winter the river backs up into the callows – the flat grassland along its lower reaches – and the flood fills with birds. This is the Little Brosna’s real distinction. The callows are a Special Protection Area of international importance for wildfowl, and after a spell of rain they hold whooper swans down from Iceland, wigeon, teal, pintail and shoveler, golden plover, lapwing, black-tailed godwit, and one of the country’s more dependable flocks of Greenland white-fronted geese. If you make one trip, make it a cold, still morning in December or January with binoculars: you will see far more here than on any summer afternoon.
Wildlife and conservation
The callows are protected as the River Little Brosna Callows Natural Heritage Area (site 000564), which straddles Offaly and Tipperary, and as a Special Protection Area for the wintering wildfowl above. Two raised bogs sit on the flood plain and carry their own designations: Sharavogue Bog, a Special Area of Conservation, and Redwood Bog on the southern margin, a state-owned nature reserve since 1991. The wider catchment – some 681 km² across Offaly, north Tipperary and Laois – drains through this one wetland system, which is part of why the flooding is so reliable and the bird numbers so high.
Fishing
The Little Brosna is a brown-trout river first, at its best around Shinrone and Birr from late spring into early summer. Dry fly is the method most anglers favour here; spinning also has its takers. It is not only trout: an electric-fishing survey at Riverstown in September 2012 turned up brown trout, salmon, lamprey and stone loach, so there is more in the water than the fly-fishers are after.
The season runs from 1 March to 30 September and an Inland Fisheries Ireland permit is required. The river is bank-fishing only, and permitted methods are artificial fly, spinning and worm; there is no trout fishing above Milltown Bridge. Inland Fisheries Ireland runs a fish farm near Shinrone breeding rainbow and brown trout, and permits can be bought online or at licensed tackle shops and local post offices.
The bridges
A string of old stone bridges crosses the river on its way to the Shannon. Derrinsallow Bridge, built around 1850, is a three-arch crossing of dressed limestone and rubble carrying a local road from Offaly into Tipperary. Upstream stand the early-1850s Sharavogue Bridge on the R492 and the three-arch Croghan Bridge, a mid-18th-century structure near Birr Castle demesne. The five-arch Riverstown Bridge carries the N52, now under traffic lights, while New Bridge – a five-arch limestone crossing of about 1820 on the R438 – is the last bridge over the river before it reaches the Shannon. None of this was ever a commercial waterway; the bridges are the trace of a working rural landscape, most of them thrown up in the decades after the Famine to knit the townlands together.
Practical information
- Access: Derrinsallow Bridge sits on a public road with limited roadside parking. Shinrone, about 5 km away, has additional parking and basic amenities.
- Permits: Anglers must carry a valid Inland Fisheries Ireland permit, available online or at local post offices and tackle shops.
- Facilities: There is no visitor centre. A small picnic area sits downstream of Derrinsallow Bridge; the nearest public toilets are in Shinrone.
- Best time: Late spring and early summer for the fishing; a wet midwinter for the wildfowl on the callows.
- Safety: The bridges carry road traffic and the banks are slippery after rain. Keep well in on the road and mind your footing near the water.
The fishing will keep till May. For the one thing the Little Brosna does better than almost any river in the midlands, come after a few days of winter rain, when the callows are under water and loud with geese.