Portrush

Its not really a fishing report as such. Basically on Sat 3rd June I was with the old man and was walking along the promenade near the rocks as you head up towards the coast road out to Portstewart. I saw a couple of people looking at the sea, near the rocks and wondered what all the fuss was about. So dad and I looked and there was a shoal of fish more or less jumping at the rocks/feeding on the kelp. There was hundreds, if not thousands and everytime the sun hit them I was seeing silver flashes. Any idea what they may have been? I thought mackeral but the old boy was adamant they were Bass. I didnt think you got Bass in Portrush.

Im heading up again this weekend and gona have a bash at catching a few, cant wait.

Hi,
I'd say they were Mullet. Can be very difficult to catch!!

-Patrick.

Have seen shoals of mackerel and coalies like that but never bass!

What sort of size were they?

By the sounds of it, seems to be a large shoal of sprat, if there were shoals like that of bass around then there should be alot more reports of them being caught?? What size were the fish?? Generally you dont get hundreds of mullet together either.....

I've seen huge shoals of mullet behaving like this in Galway, literally thousands of fish turning and breaking the surface, lots of silver flashes.

Have also seen mackerel driving a massive shoal of sprat onto the rocks in a feeding frenzy, the sprat were actually jumping out of the water onto the rocks (and our feet!) to get away from the mackerel.

Could be either by the sounds of it........

reckon its the mullet doing the silver flashing bit - seems to be part of their behaviour to flash the ventral surface - seen them at it in galway and kilcolgan

I reckon its was a large shoal of sprat being driven onto the rocks by mackerel, seen it loads of times, by the quantity of fish your talking about thats what it sounds like. Ill post up some pics

if makers-82 could tell us how big they were then it would be clear - small under 10cm definetly sprats then

where exactly was it???? :P :wink:

I have seen bass shoal up like this. Numbering in the high hundreds if not thousands but only when they are about 2 inch's long.

Sorry guys i'm just back from Portrush, have not had access to the internet. They were well over the 10cm mark, my dad is still sticking to the bass theory but thinking about it more id say it was probably mackeral with the silver underside.

Just to add another report. I was fishing the blue pool on Fri with limited success. Got 5 pollock biggest about 1.5 lbs, a few small wrasse and nothing much else.

When leaving this guy caught a wrasse which was at least 4lbs, biggest I have ever seen in the flesh.

Last Wed I also caught half a dozen mackeral off the back of Bangor peir.