Kilrush, Shannon estuary 2 June 08

Puca

Fished with Edwin today looking for his first tope of the season

Scratched around for mackerel again, still patchy
The engine started misbehaving so the decision to stay local to kilrush and miss the Loop head was taken

Ran into large numbers of small pollack looking for macks at Kilcredaun head

Arrived at Beal bar in tropical sunshine, sea like glass.
Edwins rod doubled over and it proved a real struggle to get the rod out of the holder as a tope tore downtide at a rate of knots in the 3 knot tide

Eventually, we were forced to drop off the anchor and run downtide after the fish as it was halfway to limerick at this point
A nice 30 boated and back to the bar

I missed a run. Then we sat back and watched while the local pin whiting tried to eat our flapper, with numerous rattles.
I even landed a whiting about 6 inches that was hit by a tope on the way up, no hook up

Then I managed to lose another tope, while Edwin played a very slow tope
This turned out to be a thornback of 10lbs or so.
T Barred off at the side, because he seemed to have twice the normal number of spikes.

Then, basking in sunshine met eireann issued a small craft warning. Hah, wrong again we thought

30 mins later we were upping anchor and running for kilrush as a force 6 turned Kilrush from bermuda to hawai. Great fun running through standing waves at scattery island on the ebb.

Now to find a good boat mechanic

Kev

Great fishing mate. Well done.

Kev