Thursday, April 28, 2011

Season Off With A Bang and a Screaming Drag!


Julian and I had our first session together, this season, yesterday.
 I'd come back from a trip to Kerry to find Julian was
able to get out and had been finding a few fish. Before Easter is a busy time for him getting his raku ceramic orders into galleries in the UK and Ireland before the galleries start getting busy.
Until then he'd been out once and blanked, I wasn't fairing much better with my only decent fish being a 4.5lber.

That all changed this week ,  yesterday we caught 19 bass in a three hour session! I managed 3  between 5-6lb with a mixture of 4's, 3's and a couple of schoolies bringing my total in the session to 9 fish. The best fish squirmed out of my hands and dropped back into the water as we were about to take the photo , I nearly grabbed it but only ended up with wet sleaves to show for my efforts. Here's one that wasn't camera shy.



Julian took 10 fish with similar sizes to mine . He has really made up for lost time this week, yesterday was his third day out in a row and he has managed 26 bass to 7lb in the three short sessions, that is quality angling!   Especially given the smallest neap tides , easterly winds and a sea with the clarity of tap water....

             Highlight of the evening though was the pair of us finding his glasses covered by over a foot of water on the incoming tide.
      In all the excitement he'd left them on a rock while unhooking a fish. After a long time looking with head torches over rough terrain we'd pretty much given up hope and knew the tide had covered them , an expensive downer on proceedings.
        Then he saw a glint off the lense under the water and happiness was restored.


Hard plastics outperformed the softs on this occasion . All the gear we took with us was a couple of spare lures in the pocket box, a pair of forceps each and the camera, kit bags weren't an option.
   The forceps make unhooking a lot less stressful and dangerous for you and the fish , and I'm glad to say all the bass went back strongly to fight another day.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Flounders on Soft Plastics.

Check out this great blog  " ecoastfishing.blogspot.com  " !   Fairplay to the man that is some great flatty fishing on lures , hopefully I will get a chance to try out a bit of that this summer.

Two more weeks then we should start seeing a few more decent sized bass starting to show up, mostly smaller sub 4lb fish about at the moment as far as I can tell, which of course is expected this time of year as the bigger fish have other things on their minds.
     Even though the closed season doesn't start until the 15th , which is supposedly when the fish start dispersing their eggs, it is very important to put the breeding sized fish back before this date as they may already be dispersing their eggs in your area,..... very important for your local stocks!

   The crab peel is well under way with the bigger Jacks/Cock crabs changing their outer skeleton first, water temperatures are rising slowly and spring is in full swing , everything is shaping up nicely for what will hopefully be another cracking season.