Strangford Lough

Does anyone fish this area? It is within my towing range and i know very little about how it fishes. Is there good fishing to be had? What species? are on offer? Are there good slips?

A VERY MYSTERIOUS PLACE IS STRANGFORD IT SHOULD BE FULL OF ALL SORTS OF FISH BUT IT ISNT EXCEPT VERY SMALL JUVENILE FISH ALTHOUGH YOU WOULD THINK THE MAMAS AND PAPAS WOULD BE ABOUT TOO, SADLY NO....WELL I AINT CAUGHT ANY IN THE AMOUNT OF TRIPS IVE HAD THERE AND NOT FOR WANT OF PERSEVERANCE 20+ FULL DAYSTRIPS..... ITS THE USUAL STORY OF YEARS AGO THERE WAS GREAT FISHING WELL KNOWN FOR ITS COMMON SKATE, TOPE, RAYS, SPURS AND LOTS MORE BUT THE TRAWLERS DID IT AGAIN...WIPEOUT.... A BEAUTIFUL BIT OF WATER WITH ALL ITS ISLANDS AND DEEP GULLIES AND HOLES....PITY....WISH THE NEWS COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER FOR YOU.

HOPE YOUR NOT TOO DEPRESSED NOW!!!!!!

yup! spot on loads of tiddlers but little else. there are a few spots at the mouth of the lough both inside and outside that throw up the odd good fish but the tide is so strong- upto 8knts. that fishing time is severely limited.

in 5years of constant effort -summer months only- fishing 4or 5 days per week i have never caught a decent fish actually in the lough. the sea bed is astounding and screams fish but there are none. i dont know how this happend as it must be a bugger to trawl as the sea bed can go from 10feet to 200ft in about 50yards there are no end of isolated rocky patches AND i ve never seen any one trawling! plenty of pots though.

30 years ago it was a mecca for big fish i think the problem is that in those day you caught a big fish you killed it and you cant do that for ever!

Actually very surprised to read this, i thought the Lough would have been teeming with many different species up to specimen sizes on some cases, always sad to read about the decline of such a beautiful natural habitat, maybe it can pick up again with a bit of luck and conservation.

Yes the whole East coast is something of an enigma in this respect. There are parts of it where you would think fish of certain species would have to reside but they don't. wether it is due to past comercial pressure from the UK and Ireland or polution from both coasts the Irish sea seems to be dead in comparrison to the rest of the country. I personally believe that until pressure is released on the North and Celtic Seas the fish that we all miss and once existed in the Irish sea will never spread back up to replace what has been lost. Fishermen on the East coast in the absence of fish stocks have taken to whelking and harvesting shellfish which has destroyed the sea bed which has only compounded the problem. :cry:

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who state (as fact) that there are no big fish in the lough. There are lots of big fish (even though I have not caught any of the biggies myself). In the past few years I have seen pollack to 10lb, coalfish to 6-7lb, cod to 4lb, wrasse to 3lb, flounder to 2lb and have seen a bass caught (which the angler thought was a sea trout?). I have also heard (from reliable sources) of huss to 10lb and cod to 6lb. There are also plenty of sea trout, although they are not the easiest to catch.

I was out for a while on Saturday night, around the Gowlings area and caught 6 coalies, ranging from 2 - 4lb; now I know that these aren't the biggest fish, but it was good fun on light spinning tackle.

Very little bait fishing is done within the lough and I am not aware of what areas are fished with any sort of regularity to draw a picture of the area North of Ballywhite Bay, however hopefully I will be trying the area around Kate's Pladdy and Abbey Rock and trying to build up some picture of how the area fishes; this is made slightly more difficult by fishing from a punt with no GPS or fishfinder, however he who dares etc.

If anyone cares to venture outside the lough there are a number of good areas and wrecks to fish. A friend of mine once landed a conger of around 90lb and good tope continue to be caught. There is evidence of Porbeagle in the area and reports of blue shark.

All in all I believe that there is potential for specimen fish, both inside and outside the lough. hopefully time will prove me right, particularly if I happen to be the one catching the fish.

ferrylight great to hear from you again.
i fished extensive around marlfield last summer, although rarely as far up as abbey and colin rock. and had nothing of any significance little baby cod and whiting the odd gurnard (tiny). if tiddler bashing is what you want then i cant recommend inside the lough highly enough there are places that almost guarantee a bite every minute!
but in my experience the further you get from the mouth of the lough the smaller the fish get. and once you go down beyond the ferry then fishing time is very restricted!!

i ventured down to killard and miss timed the tide and it took almost an hour getting back in (one step forward two steps back).

i think that the back of angus looks promising but dangerous.

We're heading out on Sunday with John Murry, Usually takes us up to broken ground around the Butter Platty, and on quite a few of our trips with him we've hit Good amounts of Codling, Coalies and Ling, Nothing Huge, But there's definitely plenty of them, Codling average about 2lb But we usually get a few around 4lb, which are usually Kept for Eating, the Coalies seem to be a decend stamp down there too again 3 or 4lb, and there's the odd ling we've had to around 8lb which keeps the boat competitions interesting (£1 Each the Biggest Fish).

But I agree with what's been said, for such an inviting looking Habitat the Lough itself seems terribly desolate.