Culdaff 22 June Tope & Rays
Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:35 am
People: Cathal D and Myself
Duration: 8 hours
Tide:
Weather: overcast, warm, bright spells
Bait: frozen mack, lug, whiting
Rigs: glow worms, sabikis, 3 down flowing trace, lures
Results: Mackerel, red gurnard, grey gurnard, pollack, coalie, ballan wrasse, lsd, cod, whiting, spoted ray, blonde ray, dab, tope
Report: Had a good day on the water yesterday with some glorious weather conditions matched with small tides which allowed us to push out a bit further than usual and fish the sound between Malin Head and Inishtrahull Island. There has been a pod of bottlenose dolphins in the area for the past month and we had hoepd to get some close up images but they didn't appear, we did come accross a few other bits and pieces like seals, porpoise and puffins. Fishing was very slow and we had major diffiuclty getting any bait, no mackerel around until late in the afternoon and we fished the sand with whiting, lug and frozen macks and had gurnards, ray and dabs with a few small codling on the drift. We moved out to the deeper water for tope in the afternoon and had a run after 10 minutes with a nice 30lb odd fish safely returned, drifted on for another hour with no further runs so headed back for some pollack on the lure rods and had fun with a few decent ballans. Very frustrated with the lack of mackerel and the gurnards do not seem to be present in the usual numbers either.
Duration: 8 hours
Tide:
Weather: overcast, warm, bright spells
Bait: frozen mack, lug, whiting
Rigs: glow worms, sabikis, 3 down flowing trace, lures
Results: Mackerel, red gurnard, grey gurnard, pollack, coalie, ballan wrasse, lsd, cod, whiting, spoted ray, blonde ray, dab, tope
Report: Had a good day on the water yesterday with some glorious weather conditions matched with small tides which allowed us to push out a bit further than usual and fish the sound between Malin Head and Inishtrahull Island. There has been a pod of bottlenose dolphins in the area for the past month and we had hoepd to get some close up images but they didn't appear, we did come accross a few other bits and pieces like seals, porpoise and puffins. Fishing was very slow and we had major diffiuclty getting any bait, no mackerel around until late in the afternoon and we fished the sand with whiting, lug and frozen macks and had gurnards, ray and dabs with a few small codling on the drift. We moved out to the deeper water for tope in the afternoon and had a run after 10 minutes with a nice 30lb odd fish safely returned, drifted on for another hour with no further runs so headed back for some pollack on the lure rods and had fun with a few decent ballans. Very frustrated with the lack of mackerel and the gurnards do not seem to be present in the usual numbers either.
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Re: Culdaff 22 June Tope & Rays
Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:46 am
Nice mix of species there Ciaran 
The patchy numbers of mackeral seems to be a recurring problem all over.
The patchy numbers of mackeral seems to be a recurring problem all over.
Re: Culdaff 22 June Tope & Rays
Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:07 pm
Lovely rays Ciaran, you're blessed with the diversity of your fishing up there.
Re: Culdaff 22 June Tope & Rays
Mon Jun 23, 2014 4:20 pm
very nice indeed. a nice range of types of fishing and species there. good stuff
Re: Culdaff 22 June Tope & Rays
Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:31 am
Cheers lads, yeah nice to get all that variety within 15 mins of the pier, makes for good fishing even on short sessions on summer evenings, sand fishing just starting to come good now.