Good luck for the coming season.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and I wish you all an even better New Year with good luck for the coming season.

 I'm looking forward to the 2013 season as I continue my recovery from anterior cruciate ligament rebuild.
I should be ready to get out on the rocks in March so that'll be great and probably good timing fishing-wise.

Some match angling with West Cork and District S.A.C helped to keep me busy this year and I was glad that I could complete the competitions given the time I spent on crutches this Autumn. I had never fished all the competitions before usually making only about half of them per season but this year I went for it and was delighted with how I got on in the end. Its amazing what you can accomplish if you apply yourself properly.

                     Master Angler 2012

	Name	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	TOTAL	Best 7
	Derek Kenrick	5	10	11	11	12	12	9	9	11	90	76
	Danny Wyse	9	11	7	7	7	2	11	12	12	78	69
	Paudie O'Driscoll	11	9	12	5	6	9	10	2	10	74	67
	Mike Carlton	7	7	2	12	2	5	12	8	9	64	60
	Stephen O'Donovan	12	0	0	8	10	6	7	11	6	60	60
	Joe Ganley	2	0	8	10	8	7	0	0	7	42	42
	Shane O'Donovan	2	2	9	2	0	8	6	7	5	41	39
	Cliff Gallogley	2	12	0	0	0	11	0	10	0	35	35
	Danny O'Riordan	2	0	6	2	11	4	8	0	0	33	33
	Jeff O'Donoghue	4	2	2	3	4	3	5	0	8	31	29
	James O'Donoghue	2	6	5	6	2	2	0	0	2	25	25
	Dennis Morley	2	5	2	9	0	0	5	0	0	22	22
	Graham Flannagan	2	3.5	10	2	3	0	0	0	0	20.5	20.5
	James Kiniry	2	8	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	14	14
	Luke Ford	0	0	0	0	0	10	0	0	0	10	10
	JP Molloy	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	10	10
	Will Rice	0	0	0	0	9	0	0	0	0	9	9
	Jamie Santry	3	3.5	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	8.5	8.5
	Neil Burrell	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	8	8
	Colin Mulvhey	2	2	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	8	8
	Roy Calnan	6	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	8	8
	Tony Greene	0	0	0	2	5	0	0	0	0	7	7
	Rory O'Connor	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2
	David Maverly	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2
	Sean O'Brien	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2
	Darol O'Donovan	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2
	Denis Curtin	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Dan Lynch	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Julian Smith	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Keith Stafford	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Ruairi Ganley (Junior)	2	0	2	12	12	12	0	0	12	52	52
	Jason Santry (Junior)	12	0	12	0	0	0	0	0	0	24	24

The standard is very high in this club and there will be 4 anglers trying to make the Irish International Team in february this year out of the cream of angling talent in the country. That is probably the highest representation from any club in the country at the International fish-offs , so we've had a good year here in Cork.

Derek Kenrick won a Bronze Medal at this years World Team Championships in Holland and was the top scoring Irish angler at the event.
    He's also got a Gold Medal from 2010 so I was absolutely over the moon to beat him more times than he beat me this year in our Master Angler Competition. He is so consistent though and always gets his fish, he still easily won 1st place in our league.  I certainly won't be suprised if he wins a World Individual title one day.

So I enjoyed my match fishing this year but to me its still doesn't give me as much of a buzz as lure fishing for bass and I can't wait to reacquaint myself with those silver beauties.

Ireland take Bronze in World Championships

Ireland pipped England to the Bronze medal spot in the 2012 World Shore Championships, that is excellent news .
    The hosts Holland made the most of home advantage to take first place just ahead of Wales, with Alan Price of Wales taking top individual place.
    Derek Kenrick of my club West Cork and District  was a member of the Irish team who won this competition in 2010. He qualified in the substitute position for this years competition and he certainly did the business for the team when called upon as Dave Roe had to drop out. He had the best placing out of the Irish team finishing a respectable 24th on the individual table. I'm absolutely delighted for him as I'm sure the rest of my club are. Happy days and well done Derek and the rest of the Irish team , the standard of angling has improved enormously in the country over the last few years and it's showing.

LABRAX CUP 2012

The French certainly love their bass fishing . Here is a video from the LABRAX CUP 2012 . I know the dialogue is in French but even if you can't understand what they are saying it still looks a great festival and you can get a sense of the passion they have for the sport. Well organised , good weather , it looks like fun to me anyway.

FIPS World Shore Championships 2012.

The FIPS World Shore Championships in Holland starts properly tomorrow, Tuesday 16th of October.
      Practice finished today for the 16 competing nations and hopefully the hard work of preparation has been completed by the competing anglers. A good nights sleep and a strong start in the morning at 10:00 will be the wish on everyones mind as I write this.
       Most of the teams will have already been to the venues in weeks prior to the event. They will have taken time off work and invested their own money in most cases to fly over, check out the beaches and see what they are up against in terms of logistics, available species and tackle needed. Baits will be supplied by the competition organisers for the match, but all of these will have been scrutinised on the beaches beforehand.
        Decisions would have been made that will make or break a teams plan. Hundreds of traces per team will have been tied and tactics discussed and pondered over.
        For those competing it will be the culmination of an enormous effort and expense, and an amount of preparation that most anglers could not even contemplate. A level of preparation that has been up-held through qualification aswell as practice and is second nature to those match anglers involved.It really is a case of "fail to prepare , prepare to fail" as no amount of luck will carry you successfully through this competition.
  
          I hope the Championships are a success , that the weather is kind and that there are plenty of fish to keep lads and ladies occupied. But most of all I hope that the Irish team of Martin Howlin , Eugene Farrelly, John O'Brien , Joe Duggan and my local club member Derek Kenrick stay competetive throughout and maybe , just maybe, bring home another Gold by finish on Friday..... GOOD LUCK LADS.

You can keep up to date with the daily results etc using this link.
http://www.sportvisserijnederland.nl/sportvissers/wc_shore_angling_2012/?page=draw_and_results  

Shad Season ?

I hope you are all enjoying a bit of autumn sport. To see the lovely bass that have been caught lately in Cork Harbour check out the Angling Hub blog at the top of my blog list.
         The different seasons throughout the year have their own characteristics when it comes to the way in which we like to target our favourite quarry. This time of year is when a lot of anglers are more confident persisting with their larger lures, in the hope of getting a magical double.
          Personally I like nothing better than to fish rock marks with a metre or more depth of water and a wave on them. Number one priority is a safe elevated position to fish into the decent swell, with the sun starting to disappear below the horizon the chances are I'd be clipping on a big paddle-tail shad.
          Casting out into the big water and retrieving slowly with the rod tip held high, while your minds eye pictures that tail working away as the big lure swims along, does it for me . If you're not bumping off the odd rock on the way back in you're winding too fast. Admittedly its not about technique and finesse, and casting those heavy lures in bad weather might even require heavier than normal tackle. What it does do though, is put a lure that is easier to home-in on into a water that big fish like to hunt in.
          Unless I'm fishing dirty water it is generally the only time of year I use shads from the shore. That is just one of my habits but is possibly a bad one and should probably be reviewed?
          If it is too shallow a big swell can turn water into a white seething mass which is too dangerous for any self-respecting bass to venture into, so finding the happy medium between depth and swell size is one of the keys to any success that may be had.

           It is the anticipation that a big fish might turn up that gets me out in the unpleasant weather.Its a similar feeling to fishing a live mackeral ,  in the sense that the exciting possibility of being rewarded with a lunker helps with your patience and concentration, and keeps you going. With nerves slightly on edge until that magic moment when your rod buckles over, and as everything goes solid you can tell, by the way the fish stays deep, that you've just hit the jackpot!

Unfortunately my season is on hold at the moment due to some extensive knee surgery. It has been further complicated by a couple of blood clots caused by the lack of activity with the leg. So do me a favour , get out there and catch a big bass for me.

   Oh yeah and just incase you were wondering ?...... it was playing football, not scrambling around the rocks, that caused the damage ....if only I'd just stuck to the fishing!

Gilthead Protection ?

The taking of Gilthead Bream here in Cork continues to be a contentious issue. With many anglers getting angry about the continual killing of breeding sized fish, it is not a good situation.
     Here we have a new species that has only been resident since approximately 1998. If treated responsibly a foothold could have been made by these beautiful fish in Irelands inshore zone. A spread of the stock further north around both coasts could have been a reasonable expectation given time and climatic conditions suitable for stock enhancement.
     Unfortunately most anglers greedy reaction has been to keep all the fish they catch. Cork harbour had some decent fishing for a season but that didn't last long, I heard 70+ fish a week were getting killed during its heyday.
     Whether that figure is accurate doesn't really matter now the frenzied bonanza is history. If so called anglers are that desperate for food I'll have to start a charity on this blog to feed them and save them from ruining their own hobby's future. Its exasperating really  ........

    It has been mentioned to me the possibility of lobbying for the set up of nursery areas where the taking of gilties could be prohibited.
I and many others would love to see something like that in place , I remember it having a very good impact when similar nursery areas were set up to protect bass in Wales, it is definately food for thought...........How much support an idea like that would get is another matter though, are the bream worth protecting? I don't suppose there is much to be gained financially for the goverment by having a healthy gilthead stock, infact at times it seems bass are hardly worth the effort to conserve judging by the protection they seem to get.
    I've been bass fishing here for 15 years now and not once in all that time have I ever been approached by a single fishery officer to check on what I was doing or if I had exceeded my catch limit etc!
       Isn't that a bit odd ?,where are the people being paid to safeguard the stocks that are already "protected"?  Even though they are underfunded and undermanned surely atleast once in all that time I should have seen one patrol ?
    
    What makes it more annoying for me is, I would actually do it myself on a voluntary basis given the chance and would give some of my spare time to be trained in the proceedures that need to be followed by fishery officers . If I'm acceptable for the Lifeboat/RNLI then why not bass protection?
  I'll just have to write to them and see what they say I suppose ? Infact it wouldn't suprise me if some other anglers felt the same either ?     I'll bet there is more red tape involved with saving fish than there is with saving people.    "Oh no you can't do that", is probably as far as it would get?

Anyway apologies for the ranting lately, its just representative of the feed back I've been receiving through members of my angling club and others anglers who phone or email,so I'm putting it out there.
   I shouldn't really be negative about the IFI either as they probably do more than I see or hear about ? Its just frustrating when there is no sign of them around the place. That kind of thing annoys people and is a common complaint I hear.
  
 I'll shut-up now and get back to the fishing.........
 

Thought for food.

       During the big blow we had recently it was again noticable that Kinsale harbour was devoid of any French and Spanish trawlers sheltering from the weather. There would normally be half a dozen or so of the same boats who have been calling into port for years.
     We used to be friends with a crew of French guys and shared pints and laughs through the bad gales over a couple of winters. Unfortunately at Xmas time one year they didn't make it back to port and their boat sank 30 miles offshore with the sad loss of all onboard, I never brought myself to make friends with any other crews since.
        Aside from the potential dangers of fishing off Ireland what else is causing the disappearance of foreign trawlers from Irish water?
    Oil costs and the poor prices they are getting for their fish back home,due to world recession, have now made it unviable to visit our waters so a lot of foreign boats are just not coming here anymore.
  Our own fleet are also finding oil prices are having a major impact on how they fish.The small sandy bays around my local coastline used to get trawled regularly by the inshore fleet "having a look" to see what was about. Nowadays every single tow cost so much in fuel that only the main fishing areas, with a more guaranteed catch return, are seeing any trawling activity.
     Ofcourse the benefits of this situation are starting to be felt by anglers with plaice fishing showing big signs of improvement in said bays along with dabs ,codling ,gurnards and other species.

Gill netting has also taken a hit with such a reduced effort out of Kinsale it's practically non existent nowadays. Consequently there has been an explosion in the hake stock off the southwest coast with vast amounts of fish being reported.Cod are supposed to be around in much better numbers aswell but I will wait and see before I start celebrating that news.
    I hope the wrecks continue to get a rest from the netters and given time the fishing will improve on them also, those that aren't too broken up or disintegrated anyway.

  So a strange silver lining in the clouds that is oil prices , unfortunately no such good news on the shore angling scene .
     The local Gilthead population are now being fished to extinction by brainless anglers , and with angling journalists getting in on the action I can only hope and pray I don't see any articles in the media giving away information to other greedy individuals.
     Anglers from Dublin were fishing one well known WestCork mark recently and just killed everything they caught,including gilties and schoolies, and all taken from a small sensitive stretch of water. With no small/young giltheads showing anywhere locally it looks like the end of the road for this beautiful and hard fighting species in Cork?
     Some Eastern Europeans gangs continue to decimate some areas with a thriving trade being done with their local chinese restaurant , they can be seen on some marks practically fishing/killing around the clock and not a thing being done about it , and the mess! well I better not get started on that one :-(
     Probably not the most PC of posts I've written and I apologise if I offend any of you, but I'm just reporting on what I have found is happening in my area , you may be experiencing similar situations where you are?
 

Fishing On-line

I'm back in the 21st century after some computer problems. It feels good to be online again but I didn't really miss it as much as I would have expected........it eats into your fishing time.
    If  I'd been reading the catch reports of late it might of put me off going bass fishing too. I don't know if we missed a red-tide scenario down here? but we've honestly found fairly consistent fishing this year, weather allowing!
              Our worst guided day out of the season  produced one bass of around 4lb and two mullet about the same size ,we switched target species in the afternoon as conditions were very weedy on the day. Apart from that trip we've generally been getting between 5-7 bass over a full days guiding . Ok granted its not the big numbers we were finding in 2010 but the fish are still a decent average size and customers have been re-booking so we're pleased enough. The fact that we're not a full-time operation probably helps with consistency, for obvious reasons.
     Its the same story with our personal fishing and that of our close friends with fish being found in East (mostly on bait) and West Cork (mostly lures). I think a lot of the guys who are catching fish are just keeping quiet about it , again for obvious reasons. A lot of people want it given to them on a plate and the net has proven a useful tool for gleaning such info. Some of the more popular marks have been getting immense angling pressure because of clues given away in catch reports and I don't think we will be seeing as many posted in future.
     Its guys who are putting in the effort who are getting rewards and are just keeping quiet about it . Thats how it appears to me in my immediate circle anyway, apologies if this goes against the grain of others experiences this year but I'm not going to make up poor fishing stories just to fit in with the general consensus.Saying that though , I do feel for anglers who are finding their haunts devoid of fish and hope and pray it is mostly due to the crazy weather that climate change seems to be bringing us, the other possible reasons for a scarcity along the coast are too upsetting to contemplate at this moment (We have netters and spear fishermen here too).No-one complained about the steady bass fishing that was to be found through last winter so hopefully things are just messed up at the moment.
  Yeah the weather is unsettled and this always has a detrimental effect on bass fishing which is a shame, but you can't have great seasons without poor ones , its not a computer game.
      

Bass Policy

     Plenty of hungry bass around yesterday right up to the beginning of the closed season . We all took fish on lures but boy was it cold for the time of year !  
   Have a read of the  Draft Bass Policy  , excellent work by all involved. It would be great to see the proposals implemented.
 Its a good time to target some of the huge wrasse we have around our coasts over the next month , I just hope it warms up a bit.

Fertilised eggs blown away....

  Whats happened to our prevailing winds? I can't remember a year like it . The southwesterlies we are supposed to get upon our shorelines have been practically non-existent .
   The constant off-shore northerlies and northeasterlies have hampered fishing all around the south coast. Match angling has become chronic with 3 or 4 tiddlers winning competitions and even less in some cases!

   Bass angling has been patchy and a little uncomfortable in the biting wind,  I long for some warmth to lift the spirits.
  We'll get over the below-par fishing as soon as the weather improves, its the poor conditions for stock recruitment that I find most disappointing.
   If we keep getting this wind direction at this time of year , we could find it having a negative impact on various species including bass.

   A lot of the bass in the Cork area seem to have spawned already this season. Instead of warm southwesterlies gently blowing the fertilised eggs towards the shore and into harbours , lagoons and estuaries, where good nursery conditions for the growth of basslings are found , we have a situation where practically the whole of the spring has seen blustery offshore winds driving everything out to sea.
     What the survival chances of a bass egg floating miles off the Mizen Head are, I don't know ? My guess is none or very little. Especially given the distance offshore that they might be bobbing about in these 50 kilometres an hour winds.
     I'm no scientist but I don't think 2012 is going to be remembered as a successful breeding year .
Lets hope this doesn't become a regular pattern , looking at Windguru and other sites is almost becoming painful.

My prediction in the last post came true as Derek Kenrick a member of WCAD made the Irish International team that will be competing in Holland later this year.
   He was a member of the 2010 team that won gold so will be a valuable member of this group.
 This years team looks strong and will be more than capable of having a say in the event , good luck to all those involved .

World Championships Holland 2012 , will you be there?

Aswell as the RNLI voluntary work, the blog, the guiding and a whole host of other jobs and duties , I've also become secretary of West Cork and District SAC this year.
     As anyone who has done the secretarial role in an angling club will know the start of the season is a fair amount of work collecting memberships, registering members for IFSA Insurance, entering members in regional qualifiers, writing letters , sending emails,and plenty more, I've even been helping design club clothing this year along with my family. Its definately a commitment that can cut into your fishing time , ironic really!
        WCAD isn't a club that is relaxed in its approach to competitions either.With some of the best match anglers in the World (and Gold medals to back that up) , Irish internationals and team captain, Munster champions numerous times over to name but a few accolades, its just not your average club.
  Getting a lucky match win is not going to happen, you will have to work your socks off to have any chance of being competitive . Personally I've started well this year in the club but I don't expect to make the top three by the end of the season, infact I would be delighted with 4th !
  Many decent anglers including internationals have left to join "easier" clubs because they just can't compete with the quality they're up against over a season. They can find easier routes to the Master Angler elsewhere and I don't blame them one bit.
  The system in Ireland is run that the top 10% in each club will get to go on and compete in the next round of qualifiers for the national team the following year , this is called the Master Angler and is held in a different province each year . The top 6 out of over 120+ anglers over the three competitions in the Master Angler get to go on to the "fish-offs".
    There they will make up a panel of the best 40 anglers in the country who have mostly qualified by other avenues, for example the previous years' team will be there.
     If you come in the first few (top 5 I think?) in that series of comps you will not only be a well earned International Team Member but in my mind will practically have supernatural powers or have sold your soul to the devil! :-)
  It takes dedication and consistency over the club season just to earn those master angler positions in WCAD let alone go on through the different rounds to make the Irish team .
      WCAD will have 3 places for the master angler this season and none of them will be easily won, but on the flip side those anglers who do get through will be well prepared by the process.
      I'm gonna stick my neck out here and predict that WCAD will have at least one member at the World Championships in Holland this October, infact I won't be a bit surprised if we have more than one! Now that would be some going for a small local club !

  I guess you're wondering "what has all this got to do with bass fishing ?"  Well I'm told bass is going to be one of the main target species at the World Championships and this should give Ireland , Wales and England an advantage as our team members should be as good at catching them as anyone and in all conditions?
   They probably won't be favourites though , the amount of times I've read that the French are the best/most advanced bass anglers in Europe ? and also the fact that they are defending champions should put them in that position .
  Either way I do hope bass feature strongly in the catches and we will all have an interest in this years competition .
 Well, except for anglers who may look down their noses at bait fishermen ........
    If your not one of them it might be worth considering joining a local angling club, aswell as getting you through tough and sometimes bass-less winters, it will definately improve your range of skills and ...... who knows where it might take you ? !

Bass en masse

Loads of sub 4lb bass around the West Cork (and probably East too?) coast at the moment . Easterly winds , neap tides and bass all over the place.
     Its been so mild (hot !) for this time of year and the fish have responded . Its going home once you've caught 10 kind of fishing , a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, too easy, but blows the cobwebs off nicely.
      Normally the bigger fish wouldn't start showing till the second half of April at the earliest , I'll be keeping an eye on that situation this year. 2012 has really started well lets hope it continues , Happy Bassing. 
  

Quick Report.

Julian fished a local rock mark tonight as the weather had been warm and sea conditions perfect.
      He dug ten lug and a clam as he'd planned to do a bit of lure fishing then switch to bait as darkness came on. February can be hit and miss on the lures with bait more reliable into the surf.
   Making a few casts with his shallowfeed ,now re-armed with single hooks, he thought he could feel fish swiping/hitting at the lure but wasn't positive as he was out of practice.
   Sure enough the rod buckled over and let him know his hunch was correct as he landed a 4lb bass in great condition.
After a few more casts he clipped on a komomo and caught and released 5 more fish including one of 5lb to round off a great hours winter lure fishing . All 6 of them were nice and fat and he was delighted as we finished our phone call , his bait now cast out , would there be more to come?

I'd better get my act together and have a look with the lure rod myself this weekend.

Irish sport fishing dot com.

I'm enjoying this site , it's informative and has good variety and pictures.
http://irishsportfishing.com/2011/08/

Fish Grip Science

   I've said before I'm not a huge fan of the trend for using fish grips and this evaluation of the injury and short term survival rates of fish only re-enforces my opinion.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165783608001781

If you have a habit of getting hooks stuck in your hand maybe you could consider crushing the barbs , also swapping the trebles for singles and rubberised landing nets can help in this regard.
   Its been debated many times and is currently on topic again on WSF , it will probably always be a contentious issue I suppose?

Bass fishing in Cork 2011,..........well from my point of view anyway.

              Reflecting on 2011 it actually suprises me how good the bass fishing was through the winter months of Jan, Feb and March . Given the severity of the winter and the below average temperatures we experienced in Cork, "bass lore" would have you believe that the fish would move off to deeper water and stay there until spring. Here they would find a more stable temperature uneffected by icy cold water run-off from the land and convection cooling from the shoreline.
     If they did move off-shore it would seem they didn't move too far because any time a low pressure with onshore winds came through the bass came with those winds, and fed heartily in the surf tables. Those in the know were making great catches mostly while bait-fishing and I'm not just talking about shool fish here. Specimens were turning up around the coast with lures also taking the odd fish , a 15lber was the pick of the bunch taken in Cork Harbour .

       "Bass lore" or the general beliefs about bass fishing have only ever served to hinder my catch-rate and I prefer to generally ignore them nowadays , by example easterly winds and the smallest neap tides gave us very good fishing on numerous occassions last season, the type of fishing that I get bored and pack in because the fish are too easy to catch.
      If that sounds like a load of bull' I can assure you its not , numbers of fish don't impress me much anymore, size and difficulty of catch (new venues etc) have far greater value to me. If I'm catching a fish every few casts , 10 fish is more than enough to satisfy me and I just stop fishing or move to new ground.
  I'll get onto "bass lore" again in another blog as its a big subject in itself . I will say though that if you want to improve your catch rate and knowledge this season ignore the traditional beliefs about bass fishing and just get out there and go for it . You'll learn far more than you will waiting for that perfect tide, with a SSW breeze and a setting newmoon etc, and you'll catch more for the season aswell.

 Lures started to take fish on a more regular basis from mid March in 2011 , I'm still not sure whether that was down to the fish or the anglers, a bit of both possibly?but my records show this date onwards was when finally the lures started to seriously compete with bait .
   April out-performed all expectations with higher numbers of fish in the 5-7lb bracket  turning up amongst catches and super fishing to be found , towards the end of the month it was like the shoreline was carpeted in decent bass and I revelled in covering new ground , the fishing was easy.

Unfortunately May didn't stick to the script and the two weeks up to the start of the closed season, on the 15th ,were tough going. High winds and a drop in temperature made sure we really had to work hard to pick up a few fish.
    When the closed season was finished mid June the weather was settled and fishing was good , surface lures were very popular with the fish, happy days!...........:-)
July and August were challenging enough ,but a new approach Julian and I had developed kept us in the fish and our numbers were up on the same period from 2010. That particular season (2010) had been exceptional and even relative novices had found the fishing easy through the summer.
 High summer 2011 was back to normal in my experience , lots of food about, the fish well fed and not that interested in chasing your lure about the place. Thinking outside of the box was called for , past successes meant nothing .Some people were moaning on the internet, others were out catching doubles .Two were caught in my area on the same day ,the 18th of Aug .
   The much waited for month of September came roaring in bringing with it disappointment . A top month in "bass lore" , it was made a mockery of by strong onshore winds . Lure-fishing was impractical until the latter half of the month. Even then September never lived up to its "reputation" as I think the fish had fed so well during and after the rough weather. I still enjoyed taking fish on lures and live-eels but it wasn't a patch on April !
    By October my attentions were elsewhere. Weeks before this month I had lost my lure box while jumping in to rugby tackle a bass that had snapped off at my feet. I retrieved my lure from its mouth and sent it on its way , little did I know my lure box had fallen out of the back pack and was following it out to sea. It hurts to lose one 25 euro lure, a box full of them is another matter. I had also snapped my first ever rod playing a very big fish in the swell. I was getting a bit annoyed with it all and was glad to have a break and concentrate on match fishing and the Master Angler 2011 in lovely county Sligo.
  October though was generally like November in that if the conditions were suitable the fish were about and feeding. Neither Julian or I fished much through what can be the best time of year for big fish, but when we did it was fairly good,unfortunately our enthusiasm had waned a bit.
 Ditto December , bass were about and taking lures when conditions were good, and munching on baits intended for cod in all conditions. We didn't get the sub-zero month that was forecast and if it stays that way into 2012 the baby bass from the spring of '11 will have a good chance of surviving and keeping our year round fishery in good shape.
    Good luck for the coming year and as I said if you fancy wetting a line just get out there and do it , ignore the rule book.

Funny Endorsement.

I had a good laugh yesterday, a friend of mine gave me a dozen copies of  "Sea Angler" to have a read of.
  I found an advertisement in a copy from the company "Italia Fishing", talking about the Alcedo Aluminum Pro spinning reel, they use the headine ;
    
      "Currently in use by many of the top bass anglers in the UK such as Danny Wise of Jersey Bass Guides and Julian Smith of Kinsale Bass Guides in Ireland."

Besides the obvious mistakes in the advert that made us laugh , I just want to put on record that,
    "Julian and I do not endorse or recommend the use of equipment sold by Italia Fishing". 

We gave some of it a try :-(
Nice guy who runs the company but thats that for us.

Back to the fishing,........the high temperatures we are getting this winter have been very welcome considering the last two winters we've had . Plenty of bass are getting caught on bait at the moment and even the odd ray is still picking up baits intended for cod .
   If the mild weather continues the bass will probably stay close to shore and good fishing should be found through february and march when the conditions are suitable.