The Cork Harbour Blues Experience

On Saturday Mike Thrussell Snr teamed up with some very shady characters from BAI aboard Deora Dé to play the Cork Harbour Blues :crazy:

Fearing the recent patchiness of mackerel, on Friday evening I got a very bad idea to send "Donegal Danny" aka Roadrunner out in his new fancy boat “Sandra Anne” to get us a good supply of mackerel... catch loads of mackerel Danny I said... well Danny how many have you caught I asked later, then came the reply SIX!......... boxes I asked thinking brilliant!..... No mackerel he said.

So you know that old chestnut "if you want a job done properly"....... so we went out Susan & I and we got both Deora Dé and Danny's boat mackerel for Saturday. While catching these we encountered something quiet strange, we were getting cod very aggressively on the feathers just under the boat 3 at a time I never encountered the likes of it before they were on a feeding frenzy working from mid water to just below the surface... The harbour itself was solid with sprat so thick in fact the sounder was loosing the bottom at times but this was not the case outside where we were getting the cod, it made catching mackerel more difficult but we persisted until we had enough!

We were also attacked by large swarms of strange black flies that bite these have been around with the past couple of weeks but not as bad as this they were floating all round us dead in the water could this have been causing the strange cod behaviour I wonder, the boat was black with them

Anyway Saturday morning arrived and we meet the crew, well we meet Mike Thrussell Snr accompanied by Pat O'Shea of the Commodore Hotel and Mike Hennessey of the SWRFB at Kennedy pier at the prearranged time of 8:45am, no sign of the BAI lads. So Pat went off to round them up which he succeeded in doing after sometime. Pat and Mike Hennessy were to fish on Danny’s boat so we departed the pier and as we already had our mackerel supply we headed straight out to the shark grounds approximately 14 miles from the harbour entrance. On route the lads were put to work readying tackle and put on the “rubby dubby” production line on deck while Mike Thrussell took lots of photographs of the proceedings for an upcoming magazine feature he is working on.

We arrived at the shark grounds and we set about getting our dubby slick to work. The mackerel were solid and Mike Thrussell soon had enough for the crew to last the day. Usually it takes about 2 hours before we get our first hint of a blue but Saturday was different we had one reel screaming after about 20 minutes, the first fish was caught by “Gally” who did very well to play then land it as his “friend” fish pie had put his reel on backwards for devilment but Gally got his own back not long after when he could be heard laughing 20 miles away at Fish Pie who lost the second shark after a 20 minute struggle when his trace suffered a failure. This was a big shark and I doubt the lads will let fish pie forget loosing it anytime soon!

Total for the day was 12 Blues with tackle or knot failure accounting for 6 losses
So the lads have learned a lot I hope! All the crew had a shark with Mike Thrussell Snr boating himself two for his trouble! They also boated several garfish on the float and some whiting from the bottom to pass what little spare time they had between sharks The best fish of the day went to Paddy a novice angler on only his third boat trip, his shark was estimated to weigh over 160lbs, Sean had one estimated over 140lbs, Mike Thrussell’s second and last shark of the day was the smallest of the six landed at around 60lbs so all were good sized blues! All were tagged and released back to the water in excellent condition!

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and another pic:

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nice blues

thats an awesome days fishing well done .well planned and executed. we had those flies up here last week dident think they bit, but the boat was covered like you descibed.wind must have sent the plaque to cork enjoyed the report thanks

hi jim, interesting report could you post a photo of the 160lb shark? all i can see in the photos
is pics of sharks around 40 or 50 lbs. what fork length was it?

hi jim, interesting report could you post a photo of the 160lb shark? all i can see in the photos
is pics of sharks around 40 or 50 lbs. what fork length was it?

LOL Look at the first shark pic Paddy has and look at the 16man liferaft she's sitting on top of
Then look at the last pic of Sean's in the same place that ones over 140lbs they are not the only 2 specimen blues caught here on Saturday most of the small boats with BAI and boats with the Rosies shark comp had shark to near or over specimen weight.. Due to time lost during the photo shoots and the lads tackle failures we would easily have had a few more as the area is alive with sharks out there

Mike Trussell Snr said about Paddy's blue "That must be one of the biggest blues I have seen and I have seen lots" his photos are excellent where ours are all taken at poor angles as we had to keep well back out of Mikes way but we cannot use Mikes as they are to be used in an up coming magazine article about angling in Ireland.

Paddy's blue was a female Tag no: 33636 Total Length 94" Girth 36" Fork length 80"

Well done to Paddy who was on his third ever boat trip and first held a boat rod 4 weeks ago he is now threating to buy some of his own tackle ( That's not a bad idea Paddy looking at gallys gear ) and he is going to show the other lads how to catch some "proper tope" so watch this space

thats an awesome days fishing well done .well planned and executed. we had those flies up here last week dident think they bit, but the boat was covered like you descibed.wind must have sent the plaque to cork enjoyed the report thanks

They are everywhere we even had a short visit from them 14 miles off on Saturday and the wind was westerly so not blowing them off the land, we notice several butterflies travelling among them I don't know if that has any relevance or not... any idea what they are or where they come from they are jet black and the f*****s bite alright

dont know where theyve come from. but i seen a picture of a boat last month from carlingford and you think the boat was black and moving there was that many on it .they seem to be heading south ..must have seen all the fish been caught in cork

That's them I wonder have they anything to do with the Icelandic volcano they are annoying and there's no getting away from them when they strike