Donegal

Delayed by a day due to car problems we headed out for our annual Donegal holiday last Tuesday. After arriving the rods, waders, tackle boxes and so on were neatly put in the shed and bait went into the freezer in the garage. After a good sleep and a long wait it was time to load up the jeep and head out on Wednesday late afternoon. Everything went smooth until a big roar came from the garage after my son opened the freezer and found out it wasn't working or worse it had heated our frozen bait instead of freezing it ... I will spare you the smelly details. This was not a good start. Left with no bait we had no other alternative as to grab our spinning rods and try to catch some mackerel from the rocks behind the local pier. When we arrived at the rocks there were a good few people "fishing" but they weren't catching. After 20 minutes of nothing I opened up 1 packed of super smelly frozen macs cut them in strips and baited the hooks ... bang first mackerel on a super slow retrieve and a dropping tide. Shortly we were both catching macs and small Pollack resulting in a total of 32 macs and 14 Pollack...good fun on light tackle. We had enough bait now for the remainder of our holidays so a dozen of macs ended up in the pan at 22:00 that evening.

On Thursday, with the weather being very unstable and a terrible forecast, we headed over to a pier in Donegal bay so we had some shelter and could jump in the car if things got really bad weather wise. Unfortunately the local fisherman had decided not only to put out crab pots on the left hand side of the pier but also on the right which only left us with a 50 yard gap to fish in between, not great but we made it work. We ended up with 1 conger, dogs, dogs, dogs and more dogs, mackerel (just on 3hk flappers), a few whiting and loads of small Pollack. Most of the rain blew over and we only had look for shelter once for about 10 minutes.

Friday myself and my daughter went out to yet another pier for the same reasons as before, the weather but it's also handy to fish from the car. First cast on all three rods was productive, whiting, gurnard and dabs were the two species caught. As the tide was coming in it was harder to get into the fish. I decided to put two rods over the wall and fish the deeper water, which was not a bad plan because shortly after we were pulling out one dog after another. With arms getting very tired from pulling dogs over the wall we went back to fishing the end of the pier again. We were hoping for a few more dabs but instead we got a conger, poor cod, pollack and scad ... a total of 8 species non the less and 28 fish in total.

Saturday my son and I headed out again but weather conditions we not in our favour. We visited every mark between Teelin and St. John's but just could not find enough shelter and when we did the spot was full of weed. Still managed to get 1 Pollack on the first and only cast on one of the marks but the wind was so bad I had to fill the cool box with water to tie down the rod rest. On the bright side we had a good meal on the way home in Ardara, even though people were giving us funny looks having dinner on Saturday evening in our wellies, waterproofs and smelling of l'eau de poison.

Sunday there wasn't much change in the weather so we went to the rocks behind the local pier again, we were the only ones out ... that says enough. Had the beach caster out over the sandy ground but had to pack it up shortly after, just wasn't the weather for it. Spinning was the only possible way of fishing. The Pollack were a lot more active in these rougher conditions and some were even descend in size. One of them snagged me and I ended up breaking the top half of my good auld spinning rod ... part of the game but still ..... We ended up with another 18 macs and 14 Pollack.

On Monday my son and I tried the same pier again that I fished with my daughter on Friday. The wind was straight into our face so not very pleasant to fish but we persevered and caught a total of 23 fish, dab, Pollack, whiting. dogs, mackarel and scad. Funniest part of this evening was when were taking a dog off the hook and a fox came from behind the car and stole a whole mackerel.

After all this fishing I had to keep everyone else happy so Tuesday was shopping day in Letterkenny with the Mrs and a film to end the holiday. It goes without saying that the boys and the girls went to see different films. If you have a 12 year old (or 12+) son and he is in need of some innocent sexual education just bring him to the cinema and watch "Good Boys" .... if you are older and you are in need of a good laugh just do the same.

Tried to upload some pictures but not working ... sorry.

Good report Marco, making the best of far from ideal conditions and getting some fish. Those "fish out of the car" marks are a godsend at times (though they can promote laziness at others!). Were you getting a "can't attach files" type of message when trying to upload photos, I couldn't upload any on my last report?

Tried to upload some pictures but not working ... sorry.

This should be ok now - server reset some permissions when it did an automatic update.

John

Ah great stuff John. I will give it another go

This might work again

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Pictures

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Nice holiday, nice report and nice fishing Marco

Good report Marco, making the best of far from ideal conditions and getting some fish. Those "fish out of the car" marks are a godsend at times (though they can promote laziness at others!). Were you getting a "can't attach files" type of message when trying to upload photos, I couldn't upload any on my last report?

same craic myself last time i tried

Great report. Great persistence. Fair play Marco

Plenty pf species and fish! Nice report.