Waterfoot Co Antrim , Wed 18/04/12

People:Me and Monty

Duration:7.00pm - 1.00am

Tide:Filling to after full

Weather:Sunshine..then a strong breeze and quite chilly

Bait:rag worm, sand eels, mackeral

Rigs:pennel rigs, pulley rigs, ( not sure what monty was using )

Results: 10 dogfish, 1 codling and numerous crabs




Report: after drawing a dissapointing blank the last couple of weeks on the beaches we decided after checking the tides to go back to waterfoot and give it another go. We arrived about 6.46pm in glorious sunshine and decided the omens looked good for the evening.

We started to set up and very soon 4 lines were in the water , the sea was pretty calm so there wasn't much movement in the rods after a wee while as if a switch had been thrown we started getting wee knocks on the rods and lo and behold the crabs had arrived , who started having a field day on the baits.
Any good feelings we had quickly started to vanish as we thought it was going to be a night of crusty the crustation torture.
Anothe couple of guys arrived, set up their rods, opened their beer and started fishing, 15minutes later they got back into their car and left ( they must of thought monty was going to steal their beers ).

Darkness started to fall and another guy appeared, said he had caught 3 doggies on mon night so was for trying again. shortly after darkness Montys rod gave a big kick so he reeled it in and there was a 55cm dogfish on the end of his line . It was quickly unhooked and thrown back in. By this stage all i was catching was crabs, so I changed to a pulley rig baited with rag worm and threw it back in. my other rod started to twitch so brought it in and there was a small codling with a crab getting a piggy back. Again this was quickly unhooked and thrown back in. This was it for ages with nothing happening apart from crab attacks.

By now the tide was well up and after a cuppa we both reeled in and rebaited, Monty using sandeels and mackeral and me using rag worm.

Very quickly i started getting big hits on both rods and this was the start of my doggie feast, over the next 2 hours i caught 8 of them ranging from about 40cm to over 60cm with alot of fight in the bigger ones.
Also on several occassions something had taken both our baits but as we reeled them in they got off, so the total could of been higher.

With about 15 minutes to go before we planned to go home montys rod gave a few big kicks and when he reeled in , he had another nice doggie on it.

That was it we packed up at 1am and headed home, both extremely happy that after a few really disappointing nights we had caught some decent sized fish.

I think its safe to say that we both enjoyed our nights fishing and hopefully we get more nights like this,

Big thanks Monty for a good nights craic...

some people dismiss doggies as a nuisance fish but i love catching them, they are stilla shark after all

best fight i got of one was on a really light lure rod on a piece of free lined mackerel
i tell ya, when they dont have a 3 or 4 ounce weight hanging off them they put up some scrap

Same love catching some doggies around the place, had most fun reeling a lump of a thing onto the beach at high tide, she must have been digging in due to the low water. Nice numbers in there, a few of us have drawn short in the last few weeks so hopefully we get a bit of luck to.

I don't mind the odd one, but not when they are throwing themselves onto your hooks within seconds of casting and hauling in 2 at a time from certain venues puts strain on the old back after a while. They are easy to get sick of when you have had many sessions removing around 30-50 (Swilly anyone) from your hooks and maybe other peoples' too, depending on who you're fishing with (don't squeeze fresh lemon juice for a while). After that when you have another load of trips in a row to multiple spots looking something/anything else to have them literally take over nearly every time gets pretty boring. I didn't catch anywhere near as many when I was younger, but over the last no. of years find that they appear to be really thriving everywhere, perhaps the buggers are eating everything and that's why the flatties are so small these days, lol. They'll probably evolve rapidly over the next few years and take over the rivers next or grow legs and start breathing air. To be honest though, i'm so sick of crabs at the minute i'd happily take a few doggies so long as they were mingled in with a few other species mind.

nice fishing nial, good to see your getting a few man. makes all those blank sessions over the winter months seem like a thing of the past
and as for the dogs, i know a lot of ameature anglers who would give their right arm for a manic doggie session. we have a few marks where at certin times of the year you could get 30 or 40 in a session. all great sport.
but then you have the other flip side of the coin where some anglers despise them so much they regularly kill the ones they catch. scum of the earth in my opinion
a lot of weeks back we fished a mark beside waterfoot and some muppet had left a pile of dead doggies and brown carbs just over the edge on the sea bed. we were getting tortured by the brown crabs and caught a few dogs too. but we respected what we caught and put them all back alive.
some people don't deserve to catch fish when they act like that. you'd think karma would sort them out with plenty of blank sessions in return for their scummy attitude

nice fishing nial, good to see your getting a few man. makes all those blank sessions over the winter months seem like a thing of the past
and as for the dogs, i know a lot of ameature anglers who would give their right arm for a manic doggie session. we have a few marks where at certin times of the year you could get 30 or 40 in a session. all great sport.
but then you have the other flip side of the coin where some anglers despise them so much they regularly kill the ones they catch. scum of the earth in my opinion
a lot of weeks back we fished a mark beside waterfoot and some muppet had left a pile of dead doggies and brown carbs just over the edge on the sea bed. we were getting tortured by the brown crabs and caught a few dogs too. but we respected what we caught and put them all back alive.
some people don't deserve to catch fish when they act like that. you'd think karma would sort them out with plenty of blank sessions in return for their scummy attitude

I couldn't agree with you more..... as far as i'm concerned and I know I can speak for monty on this as well but we have had so many blank sessions that I dont care what I catch as long as i'm actually catching something.

I dont believe in killing a fish unless its to eat or mackeral for bait so, so far the number of fish returned way way way out number the ones kept to eat.

At the end of the day the more fish that are killed , then the less there are to catch for everyone else

I think we are going back this week so lets see what happens this time

[dave316]

Yes, that sort of behaviour is disgusting regardless of whatever the animal, apart from wasps lol. I remember years ago, as a child, when I used to get taken on trout fishing trips to the Roe by people who stayed on the same caravan site. As we were trotting worms we would also pick up a lot of Eels and Flounder (Flukes) too. I was shocked by the behaviour of the adults who instructed me to kill these fish and throw them up the bank over my shoulder. I refused obviously and to be perfectly honest was having fun catching them anyway, but my god you should have seen the hundreds of dead Flounder everywhere as this was standard practice.
As much as crabs annoy me at times i still would never harm them either, but i remember the days when Ballycarry Bridge was a popular spot and fished great for big Flounder. My dad and I always threw them back in but a lot of yahoos used to find it hilarious to put them on the road for the cars to run over, pretty sick. I have also witnessed dead dogfish left at marks over the years many many times and find it appalling. I guess, to tread a line of responsibility, I should mention that despite them doing my head in at times when in numbers I still treat each and every fish with the same respect and return them as safely as possible. I guess there are many thickos, some of whom maybe even on these forums, don't need any further encouragement whatsoever.


ps. that reminds me of the worst behaviour I ever witnessed which was of the animals who fished Carrick Harbour in the 80's and early 90's which was so shocking that I have mainly avoided the place my whole life. Some of these guys also must have went out on boat trips as when i was a kid i used to find huge fertiliser sackfuls of many species of fish, not just Mackeral, simply dumped in the middle of the Woodburn estate in the Summer months. I'm talking large Plaice, Dabs, Cod, Ling, Garfish, Herring, Pollack and so on just left to rot. These people obviously had some great fishing, but they didn't half abuse it. Out of interest, has anyone else witnessed this type of thing as it was a regular occurence in my neck of the woods growing up?

Last edited by dave316 on Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

very true dave. and the pool at the bridge still throws up the odd bin lid flounder