Sea Angling Ireland

Wet, cloudy, not too warm .................... just another summers day in Donegal!!!!

Fished a Lough Swilly league trip out of Rathmullan on the Enterprise. Had a couple of drifts on the reef at Swilly Rock, then four or five drifts near Fanad Light, then spent a couple of hours on the sand.

Plenty of Ballan Wrasse and a few coalies and surprisingly (disappointingly) few Pollock.

On the sand we got the usual suspects - Red Gurnard, loads of dogs, loads of Whiting but unfortunately most undersize, a nice Haddock, a couple of small Cod and a single Dab and Grey Gurnard.

The fishing should have been better for this time of year. Also, there were a helluva lot of juvenile fish. Not a great days fishing.

What baits were you using and how did you fish them?

Irish_Shamrock wrote:What baits were you using and how did you fish them?

I basically used the same rig all day apart from the flowing trace for Pollock, though I changed the baits depending upon what I was trying to catch. You'll never see my rigs in any magazine, but they work for me. Basically it is a one-up, two down rig - one hook above the weight on a boom and two hooks below the weight on a four foot boom. I also have a Ballan Wrasse lookalike spoon a few inches from the final hook. When fishing for Wrasse I pile on the Ragworm and try and move it slowly hard against the rocks - a cert for Wrasse and equally a cert for losing gear regularly. To minimise losses I use a paper-clip between the weight and the boom, sacrificing weights in the hope of keeping rigs intact.

Over the reefs I used Ragworm to get the Ballan Wrasse as they score high points in our league. When I had caught my five wrasse, I switched to a flowing trace with a Mackeral strip to try and lift Pollock but never managed even one!

On the sand I used the same rig but with a dirty big chunk of Mackeral on the end hook to get my five dogs (couldn't stop getting them in the end!). On the other two hooks I used just a wee triangle of Mackeral hooked only once for Whiting. It was very effective but most were too small.

Once I had my dogs, I changed the bottom bait to Rag and hoped to avoid dogs and pick up Gurnard or even a Cod. The dogs simply left the rag as planned but started taking the wee Whiting baits on the higher hooks! Managed one Red Gurnard though.

Brilliant Arthur, thanks very much.

Didnt think bad days on Swilly happened!!! :shock:


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