Minis and smoothies

People: Dave and I

Duration: Friday 5pm to 2am

Tide: High around 9:30pm

Weather: Warm and calm

Bait: Mini soft plastics then lug crab sandeels and mack

Rigs: Pulleys mostly

Results: Corkwing wrasse, pollack, pouting, whiting, dogfish and smoothound

Report: Recently ordered an ultra-light setup. A Cormoran ULX 1-9g and Shimano Rarenium 2500 ci4 loaded with 10lb braid. Met up with Dave at Wicklow harbour to try it out for some mini species first with plans to hit ennereilly later for a smoothie and possibly a ray. Got to the harbour and there were a few lads set up already. Most seemed to be trying for macks with no joy. Started off with ultra small soft plastics to try tempt a wrasse or pollack but had no luck. Had a few follows and knew there were plenty of fish there so gave up on the lures and put a small lug on a simple ledger. Dropped it down the side and got bites straight away. Couple of rebaits later and BANG - rod slammed over, reel started singing. 20 secs later I had a corkwing wrasse of about 4oz!! What an amazing rod and reel, can't recommend it enough. If anyone wants to get back to enjoying the fight from a fish then this is the way to go. Got fish after fish on it. Lost count of how many pouting i had - biggest was about hand sized and all bar a one inch whiting put up a scrap. Rod has an amazingly light tip with a great through action leaving some power in the butt just in case something bigger comes along. Dave persevered with the soft plastics and had a few hits but no connects. Tried for a mack too but no joy - can't wait to hook one on this setup. Might take a long time to land though.
Moved on to the beach around 9pm. We had planned to get there a bit earlier but was having too much fun with the minis. Conditions looked good but wasn't too happy about the falling tide but sure what can you do? Sent a crab on one rod and a large sandeel on the other out as far as possible and sat back to await the onslaught of smoothies that we expected. Had a couple of doggies in the first hour and dave had one too and then it all went quiet. Eventually Dave had a pup smoothound in close so we thought things would finally improve. No such luck...Eventually decided to pack up after about 2 more hours of no bites. Was finished packing and had left the two rods to soak when BANG again. Line started peeling off the reel and struck into a decent smoothie. Landed him after a nice fight and the optimism was back. As i was putting him back the second rod banged over - fish on! Lost him on the way in though. Another doggie followed but that was it. Packed it in at 2am with an hour or so drive back to wexford on the cards. Really enjoyable day's fishing. Dave has the pics - he'll probably put them up later

I have to say it was good to do a bit of bait fishing again as its been pretty much all lure and fly fishing for me recently. I had convinced Ronan to take the plunge and try this ultra light lure fishing and I was bringing his new set-up down with me, so I was really hoping that we'd get a few fish and I figured Wicklow Harbour would be a safe bet. True to form it didn't disappoint even if we did have to cheat and use bait. The hi light for me though was helping a kid catch possibly his first mackerel, he had been enviously watching us catching little pouting and wrasse on nearly every drop and got talking to us. Anyway we had just noticed a few mackerel splashing about inside the harbour and both of us were in the process of switching over to spinners but the kid already had a spinner on so we quickly told him were to cast and straight away he was into a nice jumbo mackerel. Would have loved to have caught one myself on the light gear but I was delighted for him. It's hard to leave when you're catching but it was smoothound we were really after and the conditions were looking good so it was back to the cars and on to the beaches but for whatever reason the fishing was slow, very slow in fact. I mean we still caught what we were after, even if mine was possibly the smallest smoothie I've ever seen but it was an enjoyable session all the same. In retrospect though I think were should have driven a little further especially after reading some of the other reports. I guess we'll just have to have another smoothie session soon.

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Well done lads great to get a load of species in 1 session Them minis are great craic, I was on wicklow harbour today for an hour and a half and had Wrasse, whiting, pollock and coalie, i must have had 20 plus fish. it was nearly a fish a cast. I was using an inch of rag on a size 6 on a light rod and small multiplier great craic a few of the wrasse gave a good scrap and were in around the pound bracket, saw pleanty of sandeel breaking the surface with what i presume were mackeral chasing them, none of the mack bashers were getting any though. A good warm up to a smoothie hunt later on hope to get a few decent hounds tonight.

Good report Ronan ,,,,The Harbour is the place for light tackle and minis alright and you can hit into some half decent wrasse and Pollock too if youre lucky,,, especially as it hits Dusk. Well done on the Smoothies later on ,,,,,ps Dave,,,,,,,,,,,,I've seen (and caught) SMALLER .I got a few small ones a few weeks ago and was delighted with them. An expert(Fishface) who shall remain nameless told me that you wont get the biggies when them smaller ones are around but i've seen that theory disproved