Donegal Bay, 30th and 31st August, 2 PB's.

People:Just me

Duration:5hrs and 4 hrs

Tide:Ebb and flood

Weather:Glorious sunshine on 30th, rainy, dull and windy on 31st.

Bait:Hardback crab, cockles, mussels.

Rigs:Float tackle, 2hook flapper, 1 up - 1 down.

Results:Pollack, goldsinny, corkwing and ballan wrasse, flounder.




Report:
I re-visited the same two marks in my last report, a rock mark and a beach.
On Thursday on the way to the rock mark I stopped to dig some lug, or so I thought. After walking the length and breadth of the lug beds, I saw a grand total of 1 lug cast. A few blind "test digs" in spots where I have always got plenty proved fruitless. The Red Tide may be gone but it is not forgotten! This left me with a problem; tide and time was marching on but I had no bait. I collected a few cockles from the sand on my way back to the car and then drove to a stony shore where I managed to gather some hardback crabs and mussels; it would have to do.
Arriving at the mark a bit later than intended, I set up the float gear baited with hard crab and cast out. I started getting bites almost immediately but even hard crab present little challenge to wrasse. Eventually I landed a wrasse at just under 2 lbs. The small wrasse that devoured lug last time didn't seem to bother with the crab which resulted in fewer but bigger fish. A while later I got a terrific bite with the float rocketing down and out of sight. I connected with the fish which put up a great fight, really putting a bend in the rod. With some luck I managed to haul the fish out of a couple of snags and swung in a ballan at 4lbs, a new PB for me. I had a notion that this mark held more than small wrasse and it was nice to be proved right. The hard crab seems to sort out the bigger fish, it was only when I ran out of crab and used cockle/mussel that I started getting smaller ballans, corkwings, goldsinny and the small pollack. It's good to know that the shellfish bait works but the time spent coaxing the soft bait to stay on a hook is disproportionate to the time it takes the wrasse to remove it! I also found a tiny crab inside some of the cockles, too small for bait? In total, I finished with 4 ballans, 3 corkwings, 1 goldsinny and 1 small pollack.
Friday started off in complete contrast, dull, wet, windy; I was tempted not to bother but thought I might as well use the mackerel I had bought yesterday and not used. I arrived at the beach for the last hour of the ebb to see lots of kelp on the sand and in a band about 20 yards out in the water, not a very encouraging scenario. In my last report I mentioned that all 6 small flounder came to a beaded 1up-1down rig, none to the beadless flapper. This time I fished the same 1up/down beaded and a beaded 2-hook flapper to compare results. At times the weed was a nuisance but by moving backwards and forwards it was possible to avoid the worst of it. A total of 4 flounder came to hand and a tiny turbot, a micro turbo, bounced off as it was skimming across the water. I also had one other powerful bite, the rod shaking in the stand but when I struck....nothing. On reeling in to re-bait I found that the hook had snapped half way round the bend. The best of the flounder was 38cm, another PB for me. The fish were split evenly between the 2 hook flapper with beads and the 1up/down with beads; not conclusive but it seems to suggest that the beads do work as an attractant. It was good to see a decent flounder here after 6 small ones last time, and with 2 new species and 2 PB's in the last week, perhaps the recovery is under way.

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Nice fish John, super flounder and wrasse. Excellent report of a great days fishing.

Are you fishing small live shore crabs under a float with bait elastic? Sounds like the business for wrasse. I wonder is that tiny crab a pea crab? Kinda looks like something along those lines, but being so juvenile it could be something more familiar.

This report makes me want to target a big wrasse myself, never had one over 2lb.

Great report.

lordy! thats a thumping wrasse in the 2nd photo!

Well done on the pbs, my 2 fave species and btw it's breeding season for lug atm.

what a beautiful wrasse! AND a bloody crakin flounder!
great report and pics JW, well done
two little red letter days in a row. happy days

Very nice Wrasse & Flounder,the next eight weeks should be great for the big ones (harvest wrasse) as there knowing here. Great scrapers think ill be giving them a go tomorrow for an hour or two!!!

I've got it! You're Enda Kenny in disguise.

Nice pea crab too

Lovely Ballan Wrasse, beautiful markings! Congrats!!!

Hey John, I was wondering how did you weight them? Do you have a scales or do you use a length to weight calculator? Cheers

Nice fish John, super flounder and wrasse. Excellent report of a great days fishing.

Are you fishing small live shore crabs under a float with bait elastic? Sounds like the business for wrasse. I wonder is that tiny crab a pea crab? Kinda looks like something along those lines, but being so juvenile it could be something more familiar.

This report makes me want to target a big wrasse myself, never had one over 2lb.

Great report.

Thanks Cathalger, yes to the crabs under a float but I don't usually bother with elastic so as not to impair the wriggling! I think it is a pea crab. I only started fishing for wrasse a couple of years ago and for quite a while I was very impressed with anything near 2 lbs.

Well done on the pbs, my 2 fave species and btw it's breeding season for lug atm.

Thanks Dave316, but I assume the lug would still be in residence even when breeding, surely they haven't all gone to Bundoran for a dirty weekend?

Very nice Wrasse & Flounder,the next eight weeks should be great for the big ones (harvest wrasse) as there knowing here. Great scrapers think ill be giving them a go tomorrow for an hour or two!!!

Thanks Fisherking, I'll be trying again soon myself. If I could catch one a pound and a half bigger I'd be up there with the experts...

I've got it! You're Enda Kenny in disguise.

That's borderline libel!!! Where's the Mod. when you want him?!

Nice pea crab too

I should have said "3 PB's"!

Hey John, I was wondering how did you weight them? Do you have a scales or do you use a length to weight calculator? Cheers

A bit of both, I measure length using the self-adhesive measuring tape on my rod but weigh any particularly good fish.

I'm down on my local beach a lot and find the various lug beds can change quite a bit during the year, in general. When it's time to breed, in particular, they leave their burrows and make new ones which can often be further down or up the beach and generally far more dispersed. One of the big beds on my beach which was jam-packed a up to a few weeks ago (resembling molehills on the surface and yielding maybe 4 or 5 worms per forkful) is now almost completely barren. I still get milkers at this time of year but find digging a lot harder and often find them in spots they weren't in previously. Maybe 20 forkfuls at the minute is yielding 1 or 2 worms. I can remember thinking at times that something was wrong but things always seem to go back to normal.
Perhaps in your area it is actually down to the red tide but thought I would mention in case it was nothing to worry about as i'm finding it a lot harder to get lug presently myself in a different area to you.

nice fishing John, good loocking wrasse, looking forward to back on the beach for flounders, well done