Where: Launching from Rush, Co. Dublin
Who: Myself and my uncle Ken.
Duration: 09:00-16:00
Low Water: 11:11
Equipment: 7.5ft Shakespeare Ugly Stik 2 30/50lb & another generic 30lb boat rod
Bait/Rig: Feathers for the mackerel and pollock. Ledgering with single hooks on 4 rods between us, 8/0 tope trace with mackerel flapper, 4/0 uptide rig with peeler crab, 3/0 bait holder hook with mackerel strip, and some mackerel baited feathers.
Conditions: Fairly flat waters, overcast.
My Result: 1 Pollock, 7 Mackerel.
Kens Result: 1 Dogfish, 1 Pollock, 5 Mackerel.
We started the day by motoring straight out to Portrane towers to try for tope, bullhuss and smooth hound as we had plenty of chum, live peelers and some frozen mackerel ready to go. We anchored up near the yellow marker buoy and dropped out the weighted chum bucket to the bottom. We sat there for around 4 hours and the only thing we caught here was 1 dogfish, even though we were chumming and ground baiting the entire time, most of the bait was coming back up untouched! Disappointing morning but we had high hopes for another location on clean ground just off a rocky outcrop near to Lambay for the afternoon after stopping at our favorite mackerel mark for fresh bait where we caught just over a dozen mackerel and 2 pollock between us. We anchored up at the new location and threw out a fresh flapper on the tope trace in the hopes of a bullhuss. We were there for another 3 hours or so catching zilch before calling it a day. We are perplexed, we have been trying to catch bullhuss and tope all season in a few different spots we were tipped to try and no results
I might have a video to post later but there wasn't really enough action for it to be worth it!
