Rosslare/Cork small boats, "Screaming reels" does the double

People:Seirt/ Nev/ Myself

Duration:2 weeks

Tide:all

Weather: Crap, for most of it

Bait:all

Rigs:all

Results:Winners, rosslare and Cork

Report:Well, what two weeks fishing that was, my fingers have finally healed enough to be able to type a few words about what was the Rosslare and Cork small boats competitions.
As with any small boat fishing, as we all know, the week leading up to it is often spent sifting through the multitude of weather charts trying to find the one that looks good!!. Well, as we all know the first week in September was a cracker, calm seas light winds, warm temps, and sure enough as soon as we drove into rosslare, the weather broke, typical. The weeks forecast was not good at all, and at one point it looked like we would only get a couple of days fishing at most, but as with all forecasts at present, there accuracy is rubbish beyond a couple of days, I put this down to the fact that its computers doing the forecasting, and not a good old human forecaster with experience.
We attended the Saturday briefing and it was clear conditions would be tough for the week, and it looked like we would at some stage be fishing the east coast from the safe at Rosslare.
After two weeks my mind is a bit scrambled, so cannot remember exactly which days we fished, but, our first day out was from kilmore, with a fresh s/w wind supposed to decrease as the day went on, A restriction was put in place giving us a box from the northern tip of the little saltee fishing east of the channel marker bouys, to the Black rocks, with a line north from them to shore, so a fairly limited area.
As we knew a popular mini reef would get hammered we headed to it first, in what could be described as a “lively” sea. Anchor went down and the action commenced, Seirt and Nev soon had the lines in the water, and as I was getting mine baited, they were both saying, “No Bites”, hmmm. As we always do, each one of us fishes a different rig, and I chose a three down mini rig, as soon as it hit the bottom it was attacked, and up come a nice ballen, tompot and a small corkwing, nice start, still the lads were getting no interest, next drop same again, three fish, at which point I said to nev, use one of my rigs, which he soon switched too. First drop, he’s rig got hammered, and a cracking fight was on, soon a massive Ballen wrasse came to the surface, and was soon netted, a cracking fish to say the least, and when weighed onboard it was just shy of 7lbs !!!!, At least I was going to claim an assist with this fish. Whilst this was going on the conger rig took a nod, and a nice sized conger was boated. Within an hour we had picked up our first six species, so we decided to move for the next quarry. Again, unusually for us we anchored, but with the fresh conditions and very quick drift, it made for easier fishing, we had soon added a couple more species to our tally, and we decided to try a small drift between two reefs, this was difficult and tackle hungry but we did manage to winkle out a cod, ling, and grey gurnard.
We headed inshore for a ray and huss, and again we anchored, this time it was Seirt, who the night previous had shown us his sure fire smoothy rig, picking up a fine specimen smooth hound, the LSD’s were thick, but eventually we winkled out a small huss, .
We were just about to move back closer to Kilmore as the weather was definitely getting nasty as a cold front approached, a discussion was held by the organiser’s boats and the order was issued to abandon the rest of the comp and head home, a great call. Though not unsafe, it was a snotty trip back, and it P....d down with rain.
After the weigh in we stood on seventeen species for the day, we were shocked we had done so well in only 6 hours of fishing, so we were well happy.
After a false start when a group went down to Kilmore, and it was much worse than forecast, thus it was called off. Eventually after a couple of slack days, making new rigs, visiting the tackle shops of Wexford and rosslare, we had the news we would get another day out of kilmore. For this day we were a team member short as nev had to go home for some emergency babysitting! I put it down to the fact he was sea sick for the whole of the first day myself !! Though fair play to him, he fished his socks off whilst puking!!!
So day two, was seirt and myself, and we targeted as many species as was left in the same restricted area as day one, and yes the weather was snotty again! After another day of getting thrown around the deck we managed to add 4 more species to take our total to 21. We were happy with this as we knew the last days fishing was going to be from the Safe at Rosslare, and we knew we could at least pick up a couple more species from there, though it was going to be difficult as we did not have any marks for the east coast at all.
So, final day arrived and we were back up to full strength again, (sea was going to be calm!!) so we thought. We had a plan , and we started it by picking up some joeys, these were soon put to use, and after a couple of drifts we had boated 5 nice base, with a nice fish of around 6 lbs kept for the weigh in, and the rest returned, at one point all three of us had a fish on !!! Thus it was REALLY hard to pull away, and try for next species, This we did and on the first drop at the next mark we hit the coalfish we needed, great ,2 added in less the 50 mins, a good start, but now it was going to get tough. Our final targets were a plaice, flounder and rockling, and after a good two hours we managed to bag a plaice. We tried to get a rockling, and a flounder but to no avail, and we knew Uptide girl was hot on our heels and knew the east coast well. It was a very frustrating final 5 hours, with nothing added in that time. And we returned to the harbour, fingers crossed we had done enough.
Our group of boats weighed in and we were still in the lead. We hung around for the second group to come in , with Uptide girl in this group, after a nervous wait, we had realised that we had won the event again with a total of 24 species, well happy, 2nd was Uptide Girl on 22 and third Nirvana on 20 species.
Only sad news was that, this was Phil Hallsworths last time of running the event. No words can describe how much effort himself and his organizational team put into this event to make it work, especially with only a few weeks to go the house rental company went bust with all the fees ( £14000) having been paid up front lost!! It was amazing to see the generosity from all the boats attending, creating a terrific prize table.
We will be back next year, raring to go, it’s a great venue, but as with most things this year the weather can really cause grief.
So, after the prize giving it was back to the house for the packing of all the fridges freezers, bait etc and an early start to set off to cork, we headed off in convoy with Shockwaves, Seawitch and ourselves and with the great new roads and Waterford bypass; we arrived at cork around 12.30 pm. A quick unload was in order, and we planned to head out for some fresh macks and a bit of bassing on the Saturday. With four on my boat we soon had a good few macks onboard, and we headed for some bass fishing, as tides were perfect. We soon had a couple of bass onboard, and we headed in to get ready for the briefing that evening.
The weather for the week was looking much better than the one just gone, and we were sure we would get all four days fishing.

It was called that Sunday would be the first day, but restricted to the harbour. So Sunday dawned bright, and as often at Cork it always looks lovely in the harbour, but there was a fresh wind still blowing and hence the sea outside was still lumpy.
If nothing else over the last few years that we have learnt about coming second, it was the problem of picking up certain species. So we concentrated on these on the first day, and we headed back inshore at the end of the day with 8 of the nine species we had planned to get, so very happy, these included three we had not weighed in for many years, Bass, thornback and mullet. So a great start.
Monday was a day off, as the wind was again fresh all day, and with it due to drop on tue/wed/thur we knew the score. Some fresh bait was in order, with seirt headed for a dig, and myself to pick up some peeler crab. On the way back from collecting the crab, I decided to have a we fish in the Ferry, as the tides were perfect, and oh boy I was glad I did.
I was trying to suss out a mark for some silver eels accessible from a boat, but after the first 20 mins I had caught 4 bass between 6-9lbs!!!! heaven, I had given a quick call to seirt, and within 10 mins I heard the tyres screeching to a halt, as he arrived on the beach I had bass number six on the line, another fine fish of 6lbs.I handed the rods over to seirt and he soon had 4 fish caught and released. What an evening, it was hard to walk away from that kind of fishing but the tide pushed us off the mark. A memorable experience.
Anyway, it was back to the comp the next day, and a restriction was put in force due to the fresh winds from the west North West. Conditions were not too bad and we headed out to a mark for conger. Pirks went down and immediately there was interest, I soon had a brute of a fish on, and with conger fishing it will soon find weaknesses in your gear, and my braid parted , damn, but Seirt soon had one and we had it boated, a fine fish around 18lb, we decided that weight was going to be an issue in this comp so we carried on for a bigger one, This I managed to achieve by catching a 25lb fish, on a size 8 Hook on a mini rig!!! Thank god I made these rigs out of 30lb floro, even so well chuffed with this achievement, though it was beaten by Highlander who boated a fine 30lber on a size 10 hook!!!!. Great fun.
Day two ended with us adding another 13 species putting us on 22 one behind Beastmaster on 23, with a nice day forecast for Wednesday we knew 30 plus was going to be needed to win this comp.
Wednesday dawned nice and bright, and at last a calm sea, the first for two weeks, and this meant a nice clip out to past the daunt rock at 28 knots, heaven. We had a plan to add 8 species, to our target, a bit ambitious perhaps, but achievable, it started well with us picking up a Pollock and collie in short order, we then went for the drift north of the lings, and things went well, with a nice Gar, red gurnard and the big one a megrim soon boated. As these had all been picked up within 3 hours we decided to try a new mark for huss, as the harbour seemed Hussless !! Again we hit the jackpot and a nice huss came onboard to much high fives within 40 mins. So off we headed to the harbour for our blonde ray. We had tried the day before but to no avail as boats around us picked them up, but not us; though we knew they were there. This time we were in luck and had one onboard and witnessed and released, this left us a good three hours to get the 8th on the list, and this we did by picking up a silver eel and another fine bass in the process. With time to spare we had a go at a goby, but all were just shy of 14cm. All in all a great day, and at 30 species with a day left , we had the pleasure of knowing the others had to catch us up, BUT and it was a big but, we had tough task to add to this score.
Back at the slip we were receiving a little banter about it being “in the bag”, and open top bus for us for doing the double, but we knew it was still wide open.
The final day dawned and we had set ourselves and ambitious target of three species, tub gurnard, scad, goby, but we knew it was going to be hard, and this it proved, A restriction had been put on the fleet out to the smiths, but what we wanted was in the harbour, so had little effect on us.
After a quick go at the scad, we decided they were not around and had a go for the tubs, again wherever we went we kept picking up plaice, a nice problem, but not if you’re after a tub gurnard.
Finally we decided to go for the goby, and after trying 4 different venues, and catching 226 gobies, we finally picked one up in size. We knew it could be crucial.
Back at the slip, we found out one by one that the closet rivals had not managed to catch our total, except Skua who picked up a fine four species on the last day, but as expected our little goby put us at 31, our highest score in any festival, we were elated!!! we had finally done the Double, but more important we had won the Cork festival for the first time in 16 years of trying.
To sum up, two weeks fishing may sound great fun, but two weeks competition fishing is b....y hard work, and at times we wonder why we do it, the teddy on the boat nearly went over the side a good few times, but that were your team mates come to the rescue and help you come through the sticky patch. Many people who are good anglers think winning these comps is easy, but as a few who have tried find out very quickly, catching a species when you have plenty of time, and good weather is one thing, picking them up quickly in shitty conditions is another. Seirt, Neville and I have learnt so much about the many other factors involved, Tide, Time, anchor, or drift etc.
Overall, both comps are well run and well attended; the camaraderie is second to none, with everyone helping at the slipway when the conditions made retrieving the boats difficult. As for next year? Who knows, we will be there, but as with all these comps, you need a lucky fish or two, some say we have a little more luck than others, but I say I think you can create your own luck!!
To next year( hoping the mayen’s are wrong)
Regards
screeming

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Congrats!!! Beautiful specimen there!

Hats off to you guys! Well done on your victory and brilliant report.

congrats again lads great report

what a brilliant report.full of detail and action ,i was nearly puking with nev reading it .but well done does not come close for winning 2 comps back to back in rough conditions. your self ,seirt and nev put in so much and this time you got your rewards im delighted for you and your crew martyn well deserved, brilliant i also must add these comps attract the cream of boat anglers from the uk and beyond and this year was no exception with 28 boats in rosslare. a great win for a great team

well done martyn great result two great wins and good report.

thats some wrasse well done.

Well done lad ye are doing some serious damage this year.
Seirt looks like your learnt a lot since you joined Dundalk SAC