Irish Fly Fishing and Game Shooting Museum

About the museum

The Irish Fly Fishing and Game Shooting Museum was founded in 1986 by Walter Phelan, who came from a family devoted to fishing. It is housed in a restored and adapted traditional farmhouse at Attanagh in County Laois and covers about three hundred years of hunting and fishing in Ireland.

The collection includes vintage rods, reels, guns, tackle and tools, together with bird and fish specimens. Some pieces show the ingenious everyday devices made by ordinary hunters and anglers, while others are the fine equipment used by wealthy sportsmen. A room is devoted to Garnett and Keegan, an Irish firm that supplied fishing and shooting equipment worldwide, and there is a notable fly collection, with some flies dating from the early 1800s.

Visitors can enter reconstructions of a nineteenth-century gamekeeper’s room and a gunsmith’s workshop of around 1900. Other rooms cover fishing and game shooting, trophies, clay pigeon shooting, boat house and hatching, and a growing library on Irish hunting and fishing is kept at the museum.

Highlights

• Vintage rods, reels, guns and tackle
• Fly collection with flies from the early 1800s
• Reconstructed gamekeeper’s room and gunsmith’s workshop
• Room on the Irish firm Garnett and Keegan
• Library on Irish hunting and fishing

Permanent exhibition

• Fly fishing and game shooting collection – Rods, reels, flies, guns and tools with reconstructions of a gamekeeper’s room and a gunsmith’s workshop.

Founded

1986

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Kids & families

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Amenities & dining

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Events & venue rental

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