Donaghadee harbour Co. Down saturday1st Nov 08

People: just me

Duration:8pm - 3am

Tide: low to high

Weather: dry, cold and blowing a gale

Bait: rag, sand eel and mack belly strips

Rigs: 3 hook flappers

Results: 7 pollock, 7 shore rockling, 4 coalfish, 1 pouting and 4 poor cod




Report: we fished this mark from 1pm to 8pm yesterday and did'nt get a bite until 7pm. so it looks like donaghadee is back to fishing better after dark again. so i packed the car and headed back down for an overnighter fishing the incoming tide with high tide at 1am. the first fish was a pollock taken on sand eel quickly followed by the shore rockling who had come on the feed just down the side of the wall. the wind was a real issue making bite indication almost impossible and to be honest i gave up trying to strike into fish as you could'nt tell what was wind and what was bites
as i was setting up 2 guys were packing away. they told me they tried to fish ballywalter but the wind made it impossible and this mark was'nt much better. i resigned myself to the fact i was just going to have to reel the baits in every 10 minutes and see if there was a fish attached and to my suprise every 10 minutes the baits came back with a fish on or stripped bare this gave me hope as bare hooks ment there was a lot of fish on the feed in the area. i just could'nt hook them because of the wind, but they were there as i kept catching them around 1am the pollock dissappeared and the poor cod and pouting came on the feed but the wind picked up even more and the tempreature dropped even more and 6 ozs of lead was no longer keeping baits static. this was beginning to become rediculous. i mean i've never had to resort to useing boat leads to fish 20 foot from the harbour wall before but on the plus side it did make the 11 oz pouting feel like jaws coming in on the retrieve by 3am i had ran out of bait so i packed up and headed for home. i was just a bit gutted about the wind as all baits were stripped within 10 minutes of hitting the water which ment there was good numbers of fish obviously feeding hard but at least i did'nt blank like yesterday i also had a fun game of tug of war with an edible crab who wanted to keep my bait net when i was pulling it up the wall at the end of the session. he was'nt for letting go and i had to pry him off the outside of the net with a pair of plyres which gave me something to chuckle about on the way home

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Nice fishing good mix ..... bet that crab was tasty

Nice fishing.

I might try to get down this weekend.

I prepared a pile of mussels last weekend and am dying to try them out.

he was one lucky crab as i had nothing to keep him in to take home, so i let him go to get a bit bigger . hi nobuzz, the mussels i've tried got me wrasse,sea scorpions and rockling at the dee. i wrap them round a dirnking straw with bait elastic and make cocktail sausage sized pieces. they stay on the hook really well and the elastic squeezes all the juices out of them as an attractant. they also freeze down well . provided the weathers not too rough we'll be down on friday. might see you there

Sounds like a good nights fishing bar the wind!! Its so inconsiderate I am as I have fished the Dee a load of times and havent managed a rockling yet. what bait did you get them on?

Cheers

Jonny

Inch Square chunk of Macky down the side on a 1/0

nice report and good fishing,

going by your reports you have done well at Donaghadee, was the wee lad not out with you?
if not, he will be rageing that he missed that session.
BTW, nice pic's too!!!!

hi jonny, the 2 best baits for rockling are cooked peeled prawn and like drew said mackerel. but you do need to fish your bait tight to the bottom as these wee guys rarely feed more than 6 inches off the bottom. we fished for them in the summer at bangor in 5 foot of water. it was great fun watching them attack the bait but i did notice when you raised the bait more than 6 inches off the bottom they lost interest and dissappeared back into their hidey holes and fishermannum1, jordan was asleep well before i left from his halloween party the night before. he stayed up to 1am watching most haunted live and was nackered, so an overnight session the following night was a bit much even for him but i did have a cracking wee session myself

Cheers for the tip lads