Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:49 am
People: David Dinsmore, Des Hanrahan and myself
Duration: 1 pm to 10:30 pm
Tide: HW around 3:30 pm, small tide
Weather: Stunning
Bait: Mackerel, Peeler Crab, Ragworm, Limpet
Rigs: One hook rotten bottom rigs, three hook flappers, lures, feathers, everything except float fishing basically...
Results: > 20 wrasse in mark 1, feck all in mark 2, 3 macks and a wrasse to spinners in mark 3.
Report: Tried Aghadoo in northern Belmullet to start, lovely spot, headland (through the gate) splits it between left (steps down to platform, very civilised) and right, nasty sloping rocks into deep gully with stream. First drop Des lands a nice Ballan about 2.5 lbs from under his feet on the platform. followed by small things. Ground looks terrific, not a fantastic depth of water perhaps 3 metres at mid tide. David tried spinners and lures from up top out into the bay but nothing doing in brilliant sunshine.
We all end up fishing one hook rotten bottom rigs, two small wrasse to me, more similar to Des so getting bored I upped and switched to the far side past the broken fence. Second cast with ragworm, success. Really light take results in a stonking fish, clearly > 3 lbs, 40 cms on the board.
That presuades the lads to switch to the dark side (!) and a succession of wrasse come up all the way to HW. Best fish fell to Des fishing a whole crab bait, superb fat fish pushing 4 lbs, just up to 43 cms. Many fish around the 1.5 lbs mark, the rest were all in the 2-3 lb range. Excellent fishing but it died completely when the tide turned. He also landed a stunning male corkwing,; - beyond that and possibly the biggest fish, all the fish were female which is quite odd. Never seen that before, normally you get a better mix. May be that the males are guarding nests.
Pictures to follow courtesy of David.
A guillemot gave a superb demonstration below us of how it fishes by flying underwater, amazing. Can not imagine what it was hunting, no sign of sprat or sand eels in the water but it was busy for a good 15 minutes
Packed up and debated heading to Scotchport. Phone call from Corbyeire gave us bad news, feck all had by anglers there. Sorry about missing you C, kids delayed me in the morning! Decided to fish the ledges on the far side, this is new ground to me, very exposed and even with a 5 foot swell and no wind, on a dropping tide it was dodgy enough. Very foul and extremely deep water. Too turbulent, could not find any fish - we lost a few pirks trying to get the lures down in the water column... packed up and headed to mark three, the flat (slimy!) rocks at the Glosh Tower.
Arrived to find Corbyeire and the lads there already having had a poor day fishing the rocks behind Blacksod Lighthouse, nothing except macks. Lots of loose weed in the water, occassional flurry on the surface from macks. Eventually picked up three of them from a lure and a ballan wrasse as well (was certain it was a sea trout, bugger). Lots of couple of rigs, two with fish on, reckon the mono on the reel has to be changed.
Seal showed up after sunset as Corbyeire and the lads left, and killed everything stone dead...
A nice day out, amazed we got only ballans, corkwings and mackerel. Best fish was Des' ballan probably not a specimen but close.
No pollack, no flats, no coalies! Very weird...
Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:56 pm
well kieran,
no worries about missing us earlier - it would have helped if i hadnt lost your number for about 3 hours!!! :lol:
scotchport looks a great mark i cannot understand why anything else wasnt showing - can only have been the brightness
the 2 lads had macks to spinners at the very start round 11.30 - took us a while to find the spot! - the water boiled a few more times and then that was them gone - then the float fishing began
i kept going with a large shad bouncing along the bottom - got 2 follows from a pollack at the start and then nothing
as the tide was filling i had to move - swells were huge even on this fine day
kept at it until 3ish place looks awful fishy will definitely go back there again
we then decided to move to blacksod lighthouse - the keeper was sound and let us walk through - to ledges facing south and east
there were loads of gulleys and channels and 3-4m of water - but again nothing interested on the float
the mack broke the water a few times and we had some - but that was it
only thing on the baits was a spider crab
the highlight had to be when we were parking a porpoise jumped straight up out of the water about 40m from the pier at blacksod
then when we were packing up to move a female and her calf jumped out
a nice display!
then onto glosh tower - cian picked up a decent rockling round 30cm
the mack showed a few times - but that was it
a very quiet days fishing - but in a cracking location
certainly wet the appetite for me - back up there on the 13th - hopefully it will be lucky for me then!