Tide: Mixed
Bait: Crab, mackerel, lugworm, razorfish and sandeel (& some sneaky rag worm for Al and K2)
Methods: Bait fishing, plugging, spinning, fly-fishing & float fishing
Results: Bass, Pollock, flounder, Ballan wrasse, Corkwing wrasse, pouting and dogfish
Report:
K2 and myself headed to Co. Kerry on our annual winter Bass hunt.
With the car loaded up with almost every fishing rod we owned (you have to bring them all just incase you might need them) we set off for the long journey ahead.
It took us approx. seven hours to get there but the journey as always is well worth it with the brilliant fishing on offer.
The main fish/species we were targeting was bass but we managed to get to the rocks for some wrasse and pollock fishing too as the weather was so mild the whole time we were down.
We bait fished at night for the bass from the many surf beaches Kerry has to offer and then we plugged, used spinners and float-fished during the day for other species.
We were joined by Al off the site for a couple of days and he stayed with us in the apartment we had booked which had plenty of room for us all.
The best day of the whole trip was the day we (K2, me and Al) all went Wrasse fishing. From start to finish the weather was brilliant (we even got sunburned!) and the fishing was great too. Loads of wrasse where caught that day as well K2’s big corkwing which was the biggest Al or I had ever seen. I didn’t get a picture of it but Al did and he is going to put it on this report for me at some stage.
Then that night we went Bass fishing and K2 had a really nice Bass weighing 5lb on the button (not his biggest of the trip though) and Al got his bass at just over 4lb too.
We were both really pleased that Al got his bass, as this is what he had wanted to catch more than anything on his trip.
We went out of our way to make sure he caught a bass and sure enough he did!
We fished non-stop as you do when you are away but you have to make the most of it!
We travelled all over the place during our time there, fishing new beaches to suss them out for the first time and see what they would produce as far as fish goes and then going to other beaches that we had been to before and had caught from.
We dug fresh lugworm every day too which got tiring near the end of the holiday but it's a brilliant bait to use down there for bass and there's no point in travelling all that way to catch fish and not having the best bait that works when you start to fish!
We picked our locations depending on the tides because as you will already know they make all the difference in you catching or not. There's no point in turning up to a beach that fishes well on the flood if it's high tide!
We even set our alarm and got up a couple of mornings at 2.00am
to hit a beach when the tide was right and it paid off with 6 lovely bass caught between us. We only fished for mullet on one afternoon
Having done that all summer long we decided not to bother with them and fished for different species and variety's of fish to give us abit of interest and a challenge.K2 and I had a really, really good time away in Co.Kerry with thankfully plenty of fish caught but as normal our time flew in far too quickly
I have put some of our pictures up of the holiday and they can be seen below. These aren’t all of them, it would take far too long to put them all up and so I have put my favourite ones up for you to have a look at.
