Friday, October 19, 2012

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.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

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.

Monday, October 15, 2012

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  

Sunday, October 7, 2012

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!