Chuckaroo pulls a Blonde, Donegal Bay, 14th October, 2019

[johnwest]

We (Chuckaroo and myself) have been trying for what feels like an eternity to get 2 days of decent weather to coincide with 2 days off; it just wasn’t happening. In an act of desperation we decided to settle for one day as Monday seemed to offer a chance. Unfortunately, as Monday approached, the prospects were diminishing but we decided to settle for a day close to shore rather than a possible day at the sharks. As one final gesture, Wet Eireann gave us a day of constant rain, first time I ever had to bail out the boat!
I arrived at the slip to see Chuckaroo head down in his car boot sorting gear. A good toot on the horn failed to startle him into jumping up and banging his head on the boot lid, never mind, on with the fishing. Waterproofs on, gear loaded, boat launched and off we go sailing past a cargo vessel laden with wind turbine blades. They certainly had the weather for those. We had a selection of frozen bait with us and as no shoals were showing on the sounder, we kept going to our first mark and dropped down our rigs to drift over the sand. It was on the 3rd drift that I picked up a small turbot but we decided to steam further up the coast to another mark. This proved to be a good move as we both started getting a few fish; I had a few dabs, another small turbot, 2 small plaice, a couple of mackerel which took the bait on retrieve and a few small whiting while Chuckaroo opened his account with a dab. Sadly none of these fish were of any great size. Then Chuckaroo tightened into something more substantial; his old fibreglass spinning rod heeling over as a ray took line from the reel. I reached for it with the net but couldn’t quite manage to knock it off with the rim, it was a blonde, his first of the species, weighing in at 4lb 7oz. He followed this up a short while later with a nice spotty ray by which time he felt the need to hit the nosebag. While he was fine-dining, I baited up his magic fibreglass rod and lowered it over the side and a soon spotted a delicate bite. I lifted into solid resistance; this was no dab, turbot or doggy. The fish arched the admittedly light rod over and pulled line from the reel. A well bent rod always makes a good photo so I asked Chuckaroo to do the honours with the camera and just as he pressed the button, the fish pulled free. Nice picture of a straight rod! I’m pretty sure it was a blonde ray. The “magic” rod had a striped copper Abu spoon as part of the rig, I’m convinced these are well worth the expense and will definitely have to replace the one I lost last time out. I’ll buy a few and damn the expense!
From time to time the wind started to gust more strongly and bearing in mind we were well sheltered in the lee of a headland, we decided to head closer to home in case the weather worsened. It was no fun heading back as the wind and rain was stinging my face, won’t need to exfoliate for the rest of the week! We encountered lots of dolphins on the way and had a bit of fun trying to get a bit of underwater footage of them but they didn’t seem to want to play the way they usually do; Chuckaroo tried 6-7 times with his camera underwater but all he got was a couple of dolphin sonar squeaks. The next mark gave shelter but little else other than a few doggies each. Closer to home again, we nudged in to the shore where Chuckaroo eventually coaxed a pollack to take his lure, not big but beautifully coloured. One last stop produced only a few small small whiting. Chuckaroo had discovered he had a leak somewhere in his waterproof trousers, I had forgotten to pack my knee boots so all the water running off my waterproofs was collecting in my runners, so between Chuckaroo’s wet ass and my squelching wet feet, after a long, very wet day we headed in.
That will almost certainly be my last boat sortie for this year and once again, I end the year with unfulfilled plans and untested new marks carried over to next year…..

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Last edited by johnwest on Tue Oct 15, 2019 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Great day and nice fish was caught

Great report as ever - good pics - hes a wiley one that chuckaroo - youll never catch him out and a true fecker at pulling the practical jokes himself

Well done guys. Great fishing for the time of year! Excellent report and photos.

The only video that was of any use at all. The water was like pea soup and the dolphins were very unobliging when near the boat.
There's two dolphins in the very first split second of this video (top left hand corner) but turn up the volume and you can hear them clicking: https://youtu.be/SJwmAKhWXGM

A few more pics:

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Never a dull moment always a great read, thanks for all the reports.

Nice fishing and enjoyable and entertaining report as always. Thanks men!