Ennereilly 15th August:,
me and Neil, 6pm-11pm, dropping tide
Report:
Went to Ennereilly to try for smoothies and the conditions were perfect ,dead calm, but on the dropping tide there wasnt a sniff of the smoothies,in fact there wasnt a sniff of a fish at all for the first few hours in this well known "Hotspot"

. It was crap

,never mind all that stuff about being great to be out etc , etc,,,,,,,,,i'd spent a small fortune on petrol and bait and despite the best of juicy peeler crab and lug and rag nothing was biting. I was blaming Fishface ,after all ,he is a local and it was his idea to come here.

We saw an otter again so i suppose we were kind of blessed in a way. Then Neil sickened me by catching a fish, not an ordinary one but a plaice, his first this year so I pretended to be happy for him

The next few hours went by slowly as we sent out baits seaward only to haul them back in the same condition they went out. Finally I got a miserable little whiting, followed by an even smaller one and not forgetting to mention a tiny sandeel (2cms)which i'm ashamed to admit I was going to take a photo of for the species hunt

,,,,,,,,,but Neil talked me out of it

Then well into darkness Neil got a doggie which lifted our spirits and I ended up with 2 doggies, 3 whiting and dont forget the 2cm sandeel. Neil got the plaice and the doggie,,,,,,,,not bad for 6 hrs eh?


Wicklow Harbour 16th August me,3pm-7pm, hw 5pm approx ,calm sunny weather
The next day I took a half day as I had tons of rag, some lug and 2 crabs left over,so I headed to Wicklow Harbour for some comfort fishing. Lovely conditions here and not many people about as it was Monday afternoon. Dropped down the side and had pollock, corkwing wrasse, tompot blenny, a nice ballan wrasse 27cms, pouting, all the usual suspects. On the distance rod I had some whiting, a half decent coalie and some codling but there was lots of stringy weed about. The downside to the calm conditions was that I was surrounded by thousands, well hundreds anyway, of flies , all going mental for the bait. My white towel was black with them at one stage, and funnily enough I was using this to wipe my hands

. At least I was getting bites all afternoon including some from the fish which made a nice change and I finished up just before the rain

Back at the car I packed the gear away , then went up to the cliffs where I saw a biker guy fishing off one of the ledges,. As he was packing up I waited to ask him how he got on. He told me that it was a great place to fish, youre not bothered by people , that he had seen lots of fish in the water under him. The only downside was that he didnt catch any fish

Then he told me he didnt have any bait, just muppets, so I might give it a try next time

He passed me doing about 90mph on the way home in the pi%%ing rain,,,I said a prayer that he would make it home in one piece and thanked the Lord that I survived my own biker days long ago(and not too long ago when I went through the men-o-paws
Bait in both places :crab, rag, lug, squid
Rigs:2 hook flappers and single hook pullleys, mini rigs for the Harbour
ps ,Ennereilly isnt fishing too well at the moment as I know a guy who blanked there last night,I wont mention his name but he's in this report