The Wall and Pier Monkstown, Co. Cork

People:
Just myself

Duration:
Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening

Tide:
High at 4.30 Sat, 5.30 Sun
Weather:
Sunny Windy and Cold
Bait:
Lugworm, Squid, Sandeel and Mackerel
Rigs:
One hook clipped down / two hook patenoster
Results:
Loads of small codling, two about 2lb, one about 3lb.
One nice Flounder about 1 1/2 lb on last cast.
One sole (!) about 1lb
Good few Pouting, two of which must have been pushing a couple of pounds.

Report:
Went to try out the new 15ft penn powerstix and penn 525. Lovely light rod and great sensitivity for detecting bites. Good backbone as well for long casting. However the reel seems (to me anyway) to be a bit dodgy, when casting should it make that whirring noise ir should it run silent?

Anyway back to report...
Good weekends fishing, caught all the largest codling on the strongest incoming running tides. Sole was a bit of a surprise though, caught on full tide on Saturday. All hightides were useless, all low tides produced loads of small codling, and the incoming tides produced the biggest fish. Not so much of a bite on the pier.

On a side note it is a huge shame about the amount of fish killed along the wall by well meaning anglers returning fish by lobbing them back into the sea. The sea wall was littered with pouting and codling drifting out to sea or into the herons who spent the afternoons dive bombing the river... any suggestions?

when rock fishing we slide a spike of a grip lead carefully under their gills and carefully lower them into the water.seems to work ok

Or use a drop-net. You can get collapsible ones that fold up pretty neatly.
Hopefully if other anglers see you using a sensible release method of some sort - they'll follow suit.

Agree with you totally on the small fish front Viper. I had small success in deterring small fish by using massive baits on 3 and 4/0 pennell rigs. However, this only worked to a point as its amazing just how much a half pound codling can wrap its gob round. Had a half pound codling at the deepwater quay in Cobh on fri night that had swallowed a 7/0 forged hook and fillet of mackerel intended for conger. I havent fished De Wall in a while because of this problem. Biggest problem is that these little blighters the majority of the time have your hooks stuck in the top of their stomach and no amount of TLC is gonna save them. Your doing the right thing though, dropping them back in, as someone mentioned in a previous post somewhere, they are all going back into the food chain. Better off providing a heron or a conger with a pound of food than you taking these little fellas home (and plenty do) and ending up with bugger all but an ounce or two by the time head/guts/fins etc are removed. Ah, bring back those heady late november sessions when every cast was a counter......

All the suggestions above seem good Viper but I just want to praise you for your concern of the fish. Good luck with preaching the conservation message down at 'de wall'.

John D

Unfortunatlely I'm not the person to preach at the wall... the one day a year I get down is not exactly enough to convert the raft of anglers that seem to inhabit the place.