Donegal Bay World Cup Xl, 12/13 June 2014

People:Me

Duration:8 hours Thursday, 4 on Friday

Tide:4 flood and 4 ebb on Thursday, 1 ebb and 3 flood on Friday

Weather:Great, sunny, warm, slight breeze.

Bait:Mackerel, frozen lug, Power Isome worms. Fresh sandeel/

Rigs:2 hook flapper, single clipped, LRF jigheads

Results: 12 species




Report:
Thursday 12th June. Apparently there’s some World Cup starting today but I felt I was suffering from hyponatraemia so I went sea fishing and selected the above named team while I was at it. When I got to the mark it was obvious from the well worn grass that it has been fished heavily recently. Of course the amount of discarded tackle packaging, tangles of line and general rubbish only confirmed that.
However I set up the usual two rods baited with fresh mackerel, well it was fresh when the trawler caught them. One rod had a 2 hook flapper with mackerel strip and the other a large slice on a single clipped rig. After 20 mins the first bite produced a dogfish to the clipped rig. It was quiet for a long time until, on reeling in, a mackerel took the bait; really fresh bait and my first mackerel of 2014. When I had cast out a slice of fresh caught bait I set up the spinning rod and mackie-bashed another 7 mackerel on feathers. Having ensured a supply of bait, nothing showed up to sample it for a while so to pass the time I set up the lrf rod using some Power Isome worms, frozen lug and fresh mackerel on jigheads. This produced a variety of species including tiny goldsinny wrasse, corkwing and ballan wrasse, a rock goby, pollack, coalfish and poorcod. A rattle on the flapper rod then turned up a small dab and the clipped rig produced another but smaller dogfish. A couple of hours into the ebb, the ratchet sounded on the clipped rig rod and the best fish of the day weighed in at 3lb 12oz, a nice little thornback ray. So that was 11 species for the team, now where to play them? Thornback Ray Houghton in midfield perhaps with Ashley Coalfish on the wing, Didier Dogba as striker, any one of the others could end up in nets....

Friday 13th Enough said?
Thought I should consider a couple of subs for the team so off to the beach went. It was a beautiful day with sunshine and a flat sea and crystal clear water. The fish weren't interested however, not a bite for the last hour of the ebb. At range, the baits were being stripped by crabs and in close where the suds should be, the gulls were diving for the baits. An hour into the flood, a palm sized flounder turned up to save the blank and that was it for the next 2 hours. While waiting for something to happen, I noticed a couple of grey crows searching on the sand and occasionally digging in and extracting sandeels. A couple of gulls were also at this but they weren't as quick at getting the sandeels out of the sand, wrong shape of beak I think. I found that by watching the gull search and then start to dig, I could run in and chase the gull away. A couple of scoops with my fingertips and Voila, a sandeel. I gathered almost a dozen this way in about 20 mins. Sandeel bait was no better than the mackerel however though I'm sure the crabs appreciated it.

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Well done john that's some tally of species in two days fair play

Nice fishing there!!


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Great report. Cheers

Great read as always. Well done on the fishing.

Beautiful right angles on that ray

Cracking report lads, some nice fish there.

nice1 JW, you were kept busy
nice report