People: Myself, Jack & Eric
Duration: Greystones (15.00-17.30), Wicklow Strand (18.30-00.00)
Tide: Greystones (Falling), Wicklow Strand (Fill, then fall)
Weather: Brief showers at Greystones, Sunny, fine at Wicklow Strand
Bait: Rag, Lug, Razor, Peeler, Sandeel, Mack, Squid
Rigs: 3 hook flappers, loop rigs, pulleys
Results: 9 Species in total, approx 60+ fish
(Greystones) Plaice, Flounder, Dabs, Mackerel
(Wicklow Strand) Bass, Smoothhound, Flounder (1 double sided!!!), Dabs, Whiting, Weaver, Dogs,
Report: The plan was to hit greystones to target some plaice initially before moving further south later.
Arrived to find the rocks unusually quiet...Bonus....
Whilst I had arrived early and was waiting on Eric and Jack (nice to have you back with us Jack :D ), due to Eric's lack of simple directional sense, they had beat me to the set up....
Me :"Eric, are we fishing to the left or right of the cove?"
Eric :"To the right of the cove"
Me :" Ok I'm there waiting for you"
Eric :" We'll be there in 5 minutes.
10 minutes later....
Me :"I cant see you eric, are you here?"
Eric :" We're here on the rocks can you see us?"
Me :" No, are you definately to the right of the cove?"
Eric :"Yeh...hang on a minute, right, left, right....no sorry we're to the left of the cove!"
Anyway, I was soon round to where they had set up, and was maybe only a few minutes behind thier first cast.
It proved to be quite a steady session with myself and eric getting plaice flounder and dabs, and Jack contributuing with a lovely large mack.
It must be said that Eric had the lions share of the fish, perhaps his right, left episode wasnt such an innocent mistake, purposefully delaying me, he obviously wanted to get to pick his spot 1st.
:roll:
Packed up, and put the 2nd half of our plan into action, heading south to the scene of my 1st ever thornback ray and smoothie(all be it a small one).
Arrived to the mark in glorious sunshine, which was a welcome change to the earlier weather.
Unfortunately Jack had to leave us at this time has he needed to get home to see his folks, so it was just me and Eric now.
The beach had a reasonable surf, which we thought might give us a chance of Bass, but was relatively calm further out....smoothies and ray(hopefully).
We both put 2 rods out, one at distance and a 3 hook flapper in close.
First cast for eric was a treble shot (cant remember what of though).
It was fish almost every cast for Eric in close, but took me around 45 minutes to get my 1st action, coming in with a dab and flounder.
It turned out to be a relatively quiet but busy enough session.
Eric had his Bass fairly close in...it took a small whiting which had taken the rag(i think).
I struck into what was very likely to be a good smoothie on my distance rod, and after a minutes fight he spat the hook out...fish lost.
Smoothies were at least around we thought and it gave us a bit of optimism.
After the excitement, Eric had gone to check his distance rod, and found a fish had stripped a 100 yards or so of his line and had disappeared up the beach........Fish on and still taking line.
A walk of some 150 yards up the beach, taking in line resulted in the fish (somehow) snagged. 15 minutes of giving it slack, and tugging hard didnt release it, so eric had to pull for a break. A real shame, cos we'll never know what it was, but defo a good, good fish. Having fished with eric a lot, I've not seen him this excited before.
Plenty more fish coming as darkness approached, strangely some very small dogfish, I've never seen them this small before, 30-35 cms. Nice to see all the same.
After a few blanks recently for myself (Eric would never admit to a blank :wink: ), it was just nice to be amongst the fish again :D :D :D
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