Admiralty charts

Found this site where you can buy Admiralty Charts:

http://www.seachest.co.uk/acatalog/Sea_ ... _1770.html

Nothing unusual there, but this site has a small preview of each chart where you can make out where deep water is close to shore etc. :wink: All at your fingertips, you'll just have to find one in the local pub if you want more detail, or buy one of course.

Hi Adrian

Before you whack out 30 Euro on each map...

I've purchased most of the Admiralty charts for Mayo at this stage and whilst in general they are very good, transient features such as mudflats and sand banks / bars can utterly destroy preconceived notions about what looks like a good shore mark. Cliffs erode as well so that you are casting onto two feet of water instead of twenty fathoms - I had a lead bounce into the air off the water up near Benwee Head last year on a pioneering trip. It came as something of a surprise to put it mildly. :shock:

Combining the appropriate Admiralty Chart with the local Ordinance Survey Discovery series (1:50,000) map is a better bet, but that still does not guarantee you will find deep water where it should be on the map!!! Whilst this is helpful, driving along the coast (in the car or on a boat with a set of decent binoculars) is a better method for finding marks. Talking to scuba divers, kayakers, sailors (not the motorised brigade IMHO who have a hard time telling starboard and port and not jetskiers because we all hate them :D ), and even local commercial fishermen can give an excellent insight into a particular area. Scuba divers are particularly helpful if you convince them that you are keen on catch and release - clearly conservation offers common ground and some of them even do a bit of fishing themselves. Always contact the local SAC where possible...

More anon...

Hi Kieran,

I have a lot of the Ordinance Survey Discovery series maps covering the west coast as they tend to be the first thing I buy whenever I go on a trip somewhere. Believe me I have no intention of shelling out for charts as well, some local pub always has a chart on the wall anyway. I came across that particular site as I was wondering where the deep water is off Clare as I'm heading down there the last week of July. :D

Slightly off-topic:

On a family holiday to Clare a few years ago myself and my father took a drive along the coast and stopped at a platform about 10/15 feet above sea-level where you are literally casting into serious depths. This place was right beside the Burren, about 20 yards from a road that hugged the coast-line for miles. The platform we were fishing from was quite long and exposed. Sorry, I know that's a bit vague...

If you do find it, dark jelly worms, Eddystone eels and condor bars were deadly for pollack.

Hi Shamrock,

Thanks for the tip.
Can you remember were you facing north looking across at land, or west into the open Athlantic?

Straight out towards America.

Was there a lighthouse nearby, maybe on you right-hand side?

Adrian - don't remember seeing any cod thereabouts. :lol:

Can't remember a lighthouse - but then again I can hardly remember what I had for dinner yesterday... :(

Hi all

Most people fish around the lighthouse or numbered pegs, but I am told by a member of this forum that it needs an evening flood and from the lighthouse down to the mid sixties are the better marks on Black Head. Blanked the last two times I tried it and not all that keen to repeat the experience, especially given the better marks around the Clare coast...