With Her Indoors away for the weekend and a last minute green light for BiL, we looked set to be on the road again.
Very strong westerlies with the added constraint of having only 1 night and thus not being able go too far meant we had to get the thinking caps on. A look at the map gave Donegal Bay up as out best option, fairly unchartered ground for us despite a lifetime's holidaying in the county.
The BiL, by now surely displaying a 6th sense, added another hour on to the hour's slack I gave him (I wanted to go at 11 so told him 10) and he and Wee Mark rocked up at 12. Still, with the wind at its worst in the aft, I wasn't too bothered by the delay. One lost tent and 2 eejits later, after a quick stop for bait we were heading West.
We planned our 3 marks fairly linearly in terms of location ie closest to furthest. Mark 1 was a known tope mark. We knew it was fairly speculative but wanted to keep the marks more likely to produce until the wind dropped. As expected, no fish and plenty of crabs. Whilst I don't agree with everything that Alan Yates says by any means, I think he is on to something when he repeatedly says that if the crabs are feeding, the fish are not.
Next was a routine stop at a chipper for the best curry plaice supper I've ever had - worth the trip alone. How I lament the absence of this fine dish from most modern chippers in my neck of the woods. Sadly eating "fish" means battered (or even "battard" as I'm seeing more and more these days) cod, or haddock if we're being really exotic. What ever happened to the fantastic skate and plaice suppers that generations gone by regale me with?
Anyway, back to the fishing. Well fed, we set about finding mark 2. Now we knew it'd be a challenge but were it not for a very helpful local being out walking his dog, we'd never have found it.
Time dictated that we were fishing the drop here and the wind was just tapering down. Not ideal conditions and things were slow to start. BiL eventually had a solid bite which turned out to be a SSSS, a first for us after many LSSS and a fantastic fish to the eye. Waiting for bites, I gave my LRF rod the 1st of hopefully many runs of the summer. Straight away I hit a decent pollack of a lb, great fun on my light tackle. Shortly after I had what I was sure to be a shore rockling. Much ado later and with the assistance of the venerable Del Ticker off the South Wales forum, (props to that man and his fantastic thread) my suspicions were confirmed. Another species to the lifetime list.
By now BiL and WM were picking off the odd fish by way of LSD and small pollack. WM then had a small strap and it seemed things were picking up. A good rattle on my rod yielded a PB dab (top hook as always to a 15ft rod fished high). I then had a good thump. I knew what the fish was but the scrap surprised me. All but 1 ray I've had before were in strong tidal swims. This was a very deep water mark with no real run which enhanced the fight greatly. Almost 10cm less than my best thornie but gave me a hell of a lot of guff for his size. BiL also had a small one soon after.
Highlight of the night was a violent hit and run on BiL's Rampage. There were no bites, just a walloping lunge and the fish was off. He had no choice but to react or lose 2 rods and a tripod. Now, with 6 rods out on an unforgiving rock edge, planning was required and we should've worked out an exit strategy on arrival. He got the fish over the sand while I was on my way down to the water. As he went to lift the rod over the others and guide the fish over to me, it snagged. He got it out briefly then.....ping. A very abraded snood arrived back on the bank minus a hook. We'll never know what this was but it didn't behave like anything we've had before. Bait was mack. My bet's on a big huss or a small tope but as I say, we'll never know.
Tried for congers for a while longer and had a few good pulls but no hook-ups. Small straps I expect. Back to the car and 4:20am for a few hours' kip.
Next morning, wind had dropped a lot but getting to mark 3, the swell still hadn't. We had to reconnoitre the area a fair bit before finding sheltered pegs. Again things were slow here, the swell not being ideal for the species we were after. I again pulled out the LRF rod to pass the time. Immediately I was hitting ballan on the drop-shot rig. My first time trying it and I'm "hooked" - an extremely effective way to fish under the rod tip. Ballans up to 1lb and corkwings kept me busy and I must've had over 30 throughout the day. The occasional sight of what I could clearly see in the water with the help of the strong sun to be a different species kept me more than interested, positively obsessed the other 2 would say. 5 hrs later and following a shift to a moving jighead and a different reef and I saw the colours chase it. After a heart-stopping second or so, whack and he was on. Out came a stunningly beautiful rock-cook wrasse, another new species but most important of all, number 2 and the lead on the 2015 Ten Most Wanted ladder. Atchy and BiL will now be eating dust barms until the NYE awards ceremony.
Other than that, we had a conger each, mine another strap with the BiL's around 3 lb. He also had a nice ballan of 2.5 lb and I got a stray pollack of around a lb.
Fishing was at no point frantic but we ground out 10 species in far from ideal conditions: pollack, shore rockling, LSD, conger, dab, SSSS, thornback ray, ballan wrasse, corkwing wrasse, rock-cook wrasse.
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