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
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!
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.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
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.........
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.........
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
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?
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?
Monday, August 13, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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.
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.
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