Poolbeg 12/9/15

After taking virtually hourly weather updates Friday and Saturday morning, we finally decided that the odds looked reasonable.

A customary late show from the BiL and Wee Mark left us doing another Canonball run southbound to Swords Angling Centre to make our bait collection before closure at 6pm - always worth the stop when we're heading south as the bait is first class and it's a very handy nip off the motorway.

Leaving the shop at 6, we had a bit of time to kill before fishing was likely to be worthwhile with HW several hours away. The chipper in Swords provided some fuel and a short stop-gap.

Well laden with rag and prime fresh peeler, we got back on the motorway and made the rest of the journey to the mark.

As expected, things were slow for the first almost 2 hrs. An unforecasted downpour made us momentarily question our decision, especially Wee Mark, having shown up in his usual horribly inappropriate get-up. The lad was not long for the fishing at that point and returned to the car whilst myself and the BiL, still warm and dry, dug in in the hope of some fish as the tide rose. The BiL was having ridiculous trouble with missed bites, to a level really previously unobserved. The culprit eventually gave itself up to be a scourge. These pests seem to play around in a very non-commital way with crab compared to say mack / eel which is straight down their hatches. Proper action kicked off at around mid-tide with a firm pull down and attempt to run on my rod which I knew to be the desired species. I was chuffed to land a comparatively small hound, a bonus really as we didn't expect to get down this late in the summer. Another followed shortly after and I breathed a sigh of relief as I knew the journey home would now be a breeze having got what we came for.

Amidst these goings on, the BiL landed a small thornback on crab, something we haven't seen on this mark. The poor lad really was getting plagued by the scourges, mainly in the form of "missed" bites but he did have the misfortune of landing 5. In the middle of the plague, he did touch for a smoothie which made it all worth it. That fish was of a similar stamp but an undoubtedly better one hit him early in the piece, giving a pretty spectacular drop-back bite, careering towards him and sadly finding the rough before he had time to win back his line. I'd've liked to see it.

Fishing dropped off an hour or so before HT bar the scourges so we decided to make for home. A pleasing session in general, fish much smaller than last year but still good sport and better a poor year class than a total absence in my book. The weather has played it's part in the cycle with these fair-weather creatures no doubt. Running into the dogs does concern me slightly as we hadn't encountered them before and try to fish marks where they are not present in numbers. That's likely to be it for the hounds for us this year, hopefully we'll get a better run at them next year. Kerry beckons again on Thursday and hopefully we'll have something to report on after that.

Unable to UL photos.

Good report at least u got a few pups in the end

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Great reading on that report well done.
If you resize your photos you should be able to upload.

Yappo

Well done on getting the target species, especially this late in the year. Very informative report too.

Nice bit of fishing lads, well done.