Donegal

This isn't really an angling report as such and might even be more at home in a netters website but its interesting all the same. On Sat night I went to the beach I usually dig for razors for bait, normally sane people would do this during the day but work committments meant my only chance to dig the tides before they started to get small again was to hit it that nite at 11pm.

I did ok with the spade for about an hour and filled (well half-filled) the bucket with a mix of razors and clams. I then got my landing net out of the car and walked out about 30 yards into the water and turned around and pushed it ahead of me into the shore, making sure to bump and disturb the sand as I went. I had read about this on Mike Thrussels website although he uses a purpose built pushnet. This was very productive for a whole host of beasties, I landed shrimp (three types), some very small cuttlefish (Spinola atlantica), loads of tiny pollock (1 inch), various crabs, loads of tiny flatfish (thumbnail size), some sandeel and what I believe was a tiny baby gurnard. I didn't get this all in the go but altogether in about 5 pushes. Last 'tow' of the night was the best, as I turned the headlamp onto the net I had a flounder of 3/4lb, couldn't belive it! It was great fun and really interesting as you never knew what was going to be in the net and unlike the netters you get to release every thing! I'm considering leaving the rods at home the next day!

Pete

What type of push net did you have and where did you get it?

Drseafish,
I was actually using my ordinary landing net, mind you it is quite a sturdy one. Still it wouldn't stick to much of this kind of 'trawling' so I'm going to try and build one during the week. Just follow the same basic design of the landing net but making it a bit stronger with maybe a downward facing leading edge.

Pete