by arthurg » Mon May 17, 2004 12:17 pm
First Lough Swilly S.A.C. league trip of the year. A good sign was that there were too many of us to go on our usual Sunday so we had to split into two with half fishing Saturday. One exception was Charlie Devlin who will miss some of the more productive trips during the summer due to work commitments so was allowed to fish and count both days - more of him later.
Our scoring system is quite simple. Each species is allocated a number of points depending upon their scarcity, e.g. Pollock, Coalies, Dogs, Pouting, and others get 4 pts per fish, Red Gurnard 5, Ling Tub & Grey 10, Haddock Cod Ballan Cuckoo 20, etc. We also award 5 points per species. You can catch 5 of each species at the aforementioned rates, however we also award 1 point per fish above the first five caught regardless of the species.
I fished Saturday and we spent two and a half hours at the Laurentic and roughly a further two hours 'inside' - 5 hours in total from first 'drop'.
There were as many Coalies over the wreck as you wanted, though many were short of minimum size. Pollock were also there in good numbers to around 7 Lbs. There were also counting Pouting and a solitary Ballan Wrasse.
The fishing inside the lough was patchy. There was a drift of one knot and we fished from low tide onwards. Red, Tub & Grey Gurnard, one Haddock, two or three flats and another heap of even smaller Coalies.
Top points scored were 138 Charlie Devlin, 106 myself, 91 Johnny McCormack.
On Sunday, the fishing was much the same. Slower drift, less Coalies, more Pouting, a Cuckoo instead of a Ballan, a couple more flats, a couple of Whiting and Ling and a few more Gurnard.
Top points on Sunday were 147 by that man Charlie Devlin again - two counting flats on the last lift of the day!, 144 Niall Doherty and 110 Hugo McLaughlin. Usual high scorers Pat McGinty and Angela Crerand were a little further down the field.
So, in league terms it is all to fish for and this weekend will not rule anyone in or out. In general, the Swilly is fishing well. On the same trip last year we were scoring significantly less. Each week will see improvements and I'd recommend a wee trip out to anyone.
We fished as usual on the Enterprise 1 out of Rathmullan - details on the boat page. Bait tended to be frozen Mackeral supplemented by the few fresh ones that were caught. The two Wrasse were on frozen Peelers. The Pollock were on anything from Red Gills to Mackeral strips. I also tried my new Storm shads to great effect though both are now firmly lodged somewhere on the wreck! Just been out to the shop to buy more - I really liked them.