Surfing

A nice article and a great blog too, Kinsale winter boat trip.

A bit of Irish weather this week aswell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITA8GHBrmGo fair play to those brave souls.

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.........