Sea Angling Ireland

First time ever fishing out of Ballycastle. A great days craic but the fishing was slow. We headed for the pinnacles, far side of Rathlin Island, caught a load of mackerel for bait first, apparently this was the mackerel's first real appearance in the area in any numbers this year according to the skipper - Chris McCaughan . We had Gurnard, Ling and Codling (all fairly small fish). Headed a bit closer to the island (north lighthouse side - spectacular lighthouse by the way) after 2 or 3 hours of slow fishing. First drift I changed to old faithful - 1oz leadhead and black jellyworm with fluro pink tail. First cast, small pollock, every cast afterwards we landed pollock and coalies. Pollock to 7lb was the best of the day - taken by Paul Cassin . Added a new species to my list with a small octopus taken on a baited hokkai !

A feeding frenzy of gulls brought us down a bit from the lighthouse. Every fish landed afterwards was stuffed with sandeel. Had to put the hats on though as we were being bombarded with gull crap !

As I said earlier, a good days craic. Slow fishing but we got out and that's the main thing.

Arghhhh, We're planning a shore trip to fish off the back of Rathlin, apparantly its quite deep, So their is potential! Im Pollacking off Copeland tomorrow night. Apparantly their was a 12lber off their on Friday... So here's hoping.

yip, can be quite deep, deepest I've fished in (in Ireland). Depends where off the back of Rathlin you are going. At the Pinnacles it gets very deep, but closer in it shelves off suddenly and it's not too bad , good enough to spin leadheads, though I think I'd use up to 2oz leadheads next time. A bit deep for the 1oz.