Duration:9:30am - 2:30pm
Tide:HT 8:25am (3.8m)
Weather:SW8mph, sunny and quite warm, light winds at first, building, 11.5C.
Bait:Crab, Lug, Mackeral, and King Rag
Rigs:Various
Results:Excellent
Report:Today we would be fishing the third of Cobh SAC's Light Line Comps. I managed to twist Toni’s, my daughter, arm to come out today. The forecast actually wasn’t great. Xcweather were forecasting that the winds would build from low tide. Met Eireann were forecasting heavy rain as a front moved in. It was raining during the night and when we got up it was grey and cloudy. At least the winds were light. Nevertheless, I brought my rain gear in anticipation of the worst.
When I got to the pier Mary, our Club Secretary, told me that there would be 16 anglers fishing. Two had not turned up at the last minute. There would be two boats: The John Boy and the Naomh Carta. Myself, Toni, and Sandra were drawn on the Naomh Carta. Once on, I organised the boat draw fairly quickly. As luck would have it, myself, Sandra, and Toni were drawn together at no. 6, 7, and 8 on the port side
. We had a good crew aboard with, starting from the wheelhouse on the starboard side, Eric O’ Neill, Mick Linehan, Noel Carey, Sylwester Skowronski, Denis Murphy, and then us.Heading out I advised Donie Geary, our skipper, to stick close to Ian on the Naomh Carta. Ian had been fishing the area from Dognose out since the last comp and had been out a lot. Roadrunner was with him once or twice and they had great fishing. Sure enough Ian anchored south of Dognose Buoy….almost abreast of the pier at Carlisle. We went a bit further south again but were definitely on the edge of the channel. No. 6 bouy was almost due south of us. We would have to watch for shipping. Sylwester at the stern queried Donie about the depth we were fishing. About 23m came the reply, as Donie took out the measuring tape, and with that the pace of banter and craic was set for the day
. Donie called lines down at 9:30am. I wasn’t quite ready but even before I had baited my hooks there were already cod coming aboard. By the time I had my gear in the water; Noel Carey opposite me had not only landed a few already but duly announced a treble shot as he hauled three cod over the gunwhales
. I’d have to get my act together.As soon as I hit the bottom I had fish. I then started to pick them up in two’s and three’s. I had started off with lug, which seemed to work well, but soon switched to crab; the best of John Bhoy32's
. The cod were ravenous for it. They were even taking small bits of it. Soon enough I was flying. After about two hours Donie asked me how many cod did I reckon I had? I reckoned about 15. Donie told me I had over 30 .As the morning progressed it gradually became warmer. I was sweating. I had to strip off. I took off my fleece and rolled up my sleeves. Sylwester stripped down to his tee-shirt. It was glorious. So much for the weather forecast. I always reckoned it was only for Dublin anyway
. By mid-tide there was a fair run but the fish were still feeding well. As it began to slacken I noticed that as I was pulling the gear away slowly the fish seemed to go for it. All I had to do was tighten into them. It was almost as if the fish were feeding above the bottom. I decided to try a different tactic. I put on a two up one down. It didn’t seem to work, though. I don’t think I had one bite with it. In the meantime, Sandra beside me landed about a half a dozen fish. That was enough for me. I reverted back to the three hook leger and was soon catching fish. However, I had lost valuable time.
With an hour to go Martin Perryman on the Naomh Carta rang me to see how we were getting on. I hadn’t even noticed that they had moved. I reported that we were still getting them in numbers. That prompted them to move back. They had moved over to No. 8. Funny, after that call the fishing died away
. I tried to get a dab to size by putting mackerel on the end hook. I had tried Ragworm and had picked up a pouting….that seems to always work for them. Although, Noel Carey and Sylwester seemed to have no trouble picking them up I only managed two and they were both under at 17.5cms 
. A few people also picked up some herring.Soon enough it was time to head in. Noel totted up the scores. What a day’s fishing we had had. I won the boat, but only just. I had 75 fish, of them 66 were cod
. Noel came 2cnd in the boat with 71 fish, of which 53 were cod. Sandra ended up with 45 fish and Toni, despite being knocked out for quite a good bit with an upset tummy, managed 31 fish. Not a bad return.When we got in we found that the Naomh Carta had faired a bit better, despite having hardly any fish for an hour when they had ventured over to No. 8. Steven O’ Neill, Guileen SAC, had won the competition outright with 98 fish. Wow!!!
Anthony Austin, Crosshaven SAC, was second in the boat with 82 fish and Martin Perryman was third with 73.When we had put the scores together on the basis of percentages Steven O’ Neill had, of course, won the competition outright. That’s Steven’s third win in a row!!! I had come second, with Noel Carey third. Overall, there had been 870 fish caught, with an average of 54 fish per angler. Out of this total there were 723 cod. Most were around the 40cm mark but there were a few upto 55cm. Toni’s was the best I saw on our boat and that was about 4lbs in weight. Although, most fish were returned there was quite a few kept for the pan. I saw a quite a few happy faces as anglers carried a few buckets of cod back to their cars.
All in all it was a great day; great weather, great craic, and great fishing
. The weather that was forecast finally came in with the flood tide in the evening. At that stage we were well settled down around a few bar stools and too engaged with a few pints (and a few sambos) to even notice . Roll on comp No. 4!! (That’s on Sun 25th April by the way – see you all there)
that set the bar for the season