Bright Balmy Days....

  Its been tough fishing in the daylight lately which is not uncommon in July and August. The northerly based winds have provided no wave action on the shoreline and bright sunshine has fiercely penetrated the calm inshore waters with its glare, creating a no-go area for fish who like to have a bit of cover as they go hunting. The estuaries with their stronger tidal movement and depth have provided the most consistent sport for us while the sun has been up. Cork harbour is throwing up a few fish for local anglers aswell.
       Its still worth a look on the rockier areas if you're very stealthy with your approach as fish can often be seen lulling about the place or sleeping up against the rock face inside gullies . A smaller lure often imroves your chances in my opinion .
  If your into floatfishing, live shrimp or another live-bait should get better results than even the most attractively worked lures in these conditions.
        Fishing at night time has been a lot more productive, the fish have just had more confidence coming inshore to feed under the cover of darkness.
       You need to be steady on your feet to confidently fish on the rocks in the dark as it's obviously more dangerous than fishing in the daylight.
     
One recent mission was to teach some lads from Limerick how to fish for bass . These guys who moved to Ireland from the Philippines and normally fish the Clare coast were great craic , laughing and joking all day.
     And as is often the case the son got the better of the father .
    

     Gabriel  16 yearold with his first ever bass at around 5lb, took to working soft plastics with ease.

Wilbert ,Gabriels  father wasn't quite finding the same quality fish and was the butt of jokes for this little fella, no problem to a man with great sense of humour.

   Another first and another happy angler with this fish falling for a Berkley soft plastic . A Maria Chase picked him up another fish as day progressed.

        Spirits were high at lunch time after a good start to the day . But the bright calm conditions made tough work of the afternoon with one bass and six pollack to show for the lads remaining efforts. Just as important as the catching of fish is the looking after your venues and time was spent, as always, discussing the importance of catch and release for this slow growing species.

 As ever all the fish on the day were happily returned . Even my badly taken "trophy shots" are a better prize than a dead bass.
    Hopefully these lads will now be able to find a few bass on their own grounds up in county Clare and I look forward to future reports.

Cuan and Feilim booked in the same extremely bright weather and I wasn't that confident ,on the morning ,with our prospects for the day . I hadn't factored in Cuan's infectious enthusiasm though, and the lads did a great job catching a couple each and losing the odd one .

 
  We will do some night session's in future during July and August as recent trials have gone well.
  We also saw our second "Moon Bow" lately , which was awesome! I've got to get get a better camera though as attempts to photograph it proved futile.
    We have a Peregrine falcon hunting near one of our marks so I need to get back and get a proper picture of that too. The waterproof digital just isn't up to the task anymore,  research will have to be done as I don't know a whole lot about camera's?
   Looking forward to getting out on the boat more now as all this walking in the hot sun is getting to me.  Bass wishes     Danny