N/W DONEGAL DOES IT AGAIN! 12th & 13th october

Wed Oct 16, 2013 1:03 pm

People: myself and junior

Duration: see below

Tide: all states

Weather: light winds, calm seas and dry

Bait: rag, mackerel and sand eel

Rigs: sliding float, 3 hook flappers and every lure in the box

Results: pollock, coalfish, flounder, turbot, doggies, mackerel, whiting, ballan wrasse and a bass!

Report:

i'm not really sure where to start with this one. with my fathers poor health and eventual passing at the end of august our fishing has almost been non existant this year with only a few boat trips to talk of

but with a weekend to ourselves we decide that we were gonna go all out and get in as much fishing as humanly possible to make up for lost time

we left belfast, donegal bound at 6am on saturday morning and were booked into out guest house for 9am and fishing by 10am :mrgreen:

our first mark was a spot on the rocks i scoped out a few times in the past but just never got around to fishing. it put us into a good depth of water with rough ground on the sea bed. so before i had my bottom rods sorted out jordan was already landing ballan wrasse on the float

this was to set the tone for the session with quality wrasse coming in thick and fast with every cast. they were going mad for the big king rag we had and the float was barely getting time to cock at the stop knot before it was getting nailed!! this was pretty amazing stuff

about an hour into the session a boil appeared on the surface of the water just 50 yards in front of us and i quickly set up a set of feathers and chucked them into the middle of it. the takes were instant with a full house of 1lb pollack returning with every chuck. not what i was after, but it was great fun all the same. after about 6 throws i hit the mackerel with a few coming in for some fresh bait then the boil dissappeared. with the frenzy over i put the feathers away and got the botton rods sorted and baited up with some fresh mackerel.
jordan was still hammering the wrasse while i spun for a while with a mix of herring type lures and german sprats. the pollack seemed to like them with almost every cast resulting in a take. some of theses greedy little blighters were no bigger than the lure, but some were substantially bigger almost making it to 60cm in length

jordan was still nailing the wrasse and they were to a pretty decent size too with a fair few 4lb'ers being taken by him.
but all too soon it was time to pack up and head off for our evening beach session. this was by far one of the best rock sessions we have had in the past 2 years with both quantity and quality. jordan must have easily had 40 wrasse and the pollack and coaleys wer abundant to say the least. but all the bottom rods got were doggies. but hey,, a fish is a fish in my book. they are all welcome :mrgreen:

the evening beach session only lasted 4 hours as we had missed the window of tide we had wanted, but it still threw up some doggies, turbot whiting and flounder.
and of course jordan in all his jammy glory sneaking out a bass!! he was delighted and it was the perfect end to a great day's fishing. it weighed in at 2lb 9oz and measured 45cm. added to which he finally got it on his limited edition century rod that fishface had given him last year for his birthday! he's wanted a bass on it since he got it and it finally happened for him. so i was made up for him

SUNDAY 13TH OCTOBER
the 8am alarm call came all too soon, but after a full irish fry in the guest house we were off again to squeeze in a sneeky 4 hour session on the rocks from the day before to see if yesterday was a fluke or if it was still fishing it's socks off. thankfully it did'nt dissappoint and it was on fire again

jordan perched himself back to his wrasse hot spot and was hauling them again with some good quality 4lb'ers among the 1lb fish that seemed to be all over the place while i went back to spinning as the worms were on short supply. the pollack and coaleys were just as abundant as the day before and attacked whatever kind of lure i threw out there. this was something else

jordan even started catching some of the same fish from yesterday too. there was one particularly greedy wrasse who was'nt in any way hook shy. i had to check the pics, but he deffo made an appearence from the day before too :lol:

sadly we had ran out of bait and out of time and we had to call it a day and head for home :cry:

it's sessions like this that reaffirm why we do what we do and justify the lengths we go to in the love of our sport

but sure, it's more than just a hobby for a lot of us. it's a way of life. and with sessions like these, life can't really get much better