Kinsale, co Cork, 19th October 2019

[keem]

Date: 19th October
Venue: Kinsale harbour and further out.
Weather and Wind: Sunny with offshore wind from the north.

Here is my report about the fishing trip with anglers from local fishing club (Limerick).
Twice a year we go for a trip in Kinsale, co Cork. The usual plan is get some mackerel first just on the exit from the harbour, then travel to Old Head lighthouse to drift over the rough ground, then get to the final destination - the famous Ling rock which is a bit far away from the mainland.
A while ago I realized that fishing is more about the process than the fish, so I now love experiments.
On the first stop for mackerel everybody were fishing just feathers and standard lead, I decided to put 4 inch fire tail soft plastic as on the picture om the bottom of the feathers instead of a lead.
Everybody got the mackerel except me. While I was going to catch a specimen mackerel using the soft plastic, the fish was simply scared to attack anything
with this read tail. Once I replaced the soft plastic with the small 60g lure, I got my bait for the day and a bit more.
So sometimes if you want to attract the fish, this may work opposite, so the fish just got scared...
The next exercise was drifting beside the Old Head lighthouse. While travelling I spotted a Bluefin tuna first time in my life:
In 200-300 meters I saw a large fish jumped from the water, I expected a dolphin but the jump was higher, then once I saw the tail I realized this was a tuna.
The tail was like a tail of a huge mackerel. The skipper confirms my thoughts. The tuna is there…
So Pollock fishing. Instead of using feathers I wanted to try flying collar (never tried before). I put 4 inch sand eel (mackerel colour with red tail) on 4 ft trace.
After a few minutes first bait and the fish Pollock around 4-5lbs. Then this became quiet for our side of the boat except one angler who caught big cod (over 6lb) just on feathers.
Billy, old fellow on the other side, was using three hooks rig with squid/mackerel bait and a pilker and he was constantly getting fish (wrasse, Pollock and even ling).
I got one decent whiting while we were over the sand.
The next stop was a Ling Rock. This is a great place, I got my heaviest ever fish - 5kg conger two years ago. This time the conger was caught by Ken, another great fellow.
I got two Pollock’s while drifting over the rock. When we anchored I got two cuckoo wrasses, unfortunately nothing else.
A few medium size lings were caught by other anglers, I would blame the strong offshore wind from the North.
Anyway this was a good day, hope to go again in April/May next year.

[keem]

Nice report there and some nice fish. I like trying out soft plastics too and am trying to get founders on them from the shore without success but God loves a tryer