Duration:10am to 7pm
Tide:Various
Weather:Sun splitting the stones
Bait:Rag, Mack, Squid
Rigs:Baited Shrimpers & Hokkais, 2 up 1 downs, Shads and Lures
Results:Mack, Cod, Whiting, Ling, Grey Gurnard, Poor Cod, Pouting, Conger, Wrasse, Coalfish, Pollack.
Report:We steamed out from Cobh at 10 am aboard the Chieftain, piloted by none other than Cobh Skipper on an absolute peach of a day in Cork. With the sun shining and loads of room aboard there were high hopes of a good days fishing with the added edge of competition too
We made the traditional mackerel stop at the mouth of the harbour, where they were patchy to say the least at the time. I couldnt buy a mackerel myself but did manage to pull up 2 nice plump codling instead on the Shrimp rigs...
Shame they didnt count as we hadnt started the competitive stuff at that stage! We headed East in a nice combination of wind against tide that made things fairly lumpy at the time to a known cod reef. JD was first into a fish with a nice ballan wrasse of 3lbs or so to shrimp rigs baited with Rag. I quickly followed that with a couple of nice >50cm cod. Fishing was patchy enough over that particular mark but a few more cod followed, baited hokkais accounting for the majority of fish. After a couple of lengthy drifts over this mark with fishing being relatively slow we headed to a nearby pollack mark. Fishing had slowed down further at this particular spot with just bits and pieces coming aboard, pollack were nowhere to be seen. Blaker however was having the best of it and was steadily eating into the healthy lead I had established in the earlier drifts..... We tried a drift down the other side of the mark with similar results, however we had several whiting on board and also a small ling of maybe a pound or so which strangely took a baited jellyworm I was spinning on the light gear. I was steadily working my way through all combinations of jelly and plastic in what was to be a fruitless hunt for a pollack or two. JD at this point managed to pull in what is probably the smallest fish you are ever likely to see hooked at sea, a poor cod of 2/3 inches long or so. Pity poor old JD by the way, he was embarking on a species hunt using shrimp rigs baited with rag and mack strip but he just couldnt get away from the macks...... Thanks for the constant supply of fresh bait John!
It was decided that, given the slow fishing, we would head to a conger mark near Buoy number 6 and anchor up. This we duly did and the 2 up 1 down rigs were made up and dropped down in hope of conger and ling. Blaker was first into a fish with a conger, followed fairly soon after by another conger, this time to JD. At this stage, any lead I had was now well and truly gone as I couldnt buy a fish, I had been patiently letting a "bite" develop, nudging a few inches of line off at a time until I could take no more and hit and wound up a big red crab about 6 inches across...
Blaker managed another conger fairly soon after that. I had a small knock on my rod which I let develop for a while before striking. On winding up to the fish and gaining the first couple of feet of line, it decided it was having none of it and ripped a few metres of line off as it dived back for the safety of the reef whereupon it became promptly stuck. With much advice from Mark (Cobh Skipper) It was given plenty of slack line, left alone for a few minutes and then hit again. After a good ten minutes and 2 or 3 trys at this I eventually got the fish out of its hole and on the move, a just into double figures conger came to the surface. It had taken one of the hooks above the weight, the trace below the weight had been broken off, I think, given the power on first connecting with the fish there were probably 2 fish on initially. Still, good to have it aboard and a lesson learned in patience also! With all being fairly quiet, we headed to another mark for a drift or two to finish off the competition. Blaker pulled in another couple of cod and a small pollack to further extend his lead. The five minutes to go warning had been sounded when all of a sudden we happened on a patch of ground full of pouting. A manic couple of minutes followed with pouting being pulled up right left and centre. At this stage I had the shrimp rigs back on and they were absolutely deadly for them, pulling them up 2 and 3 at a time, I also had a small coalfish. The comp was going down to the wire.....
Time was called on the competition and without counting up, it was clear it was going to be very close indeed...... We started getting tidied up and began the journey back to port. On the way back in, a mile or two directly outside the mouth of the harbour we happened upon a huge shoal of fry, breaking the surface in sheer panic as something was obviously making a lovely meal out of them. We decided to have a crack at whatever it was that was working them and stopped and dropped. Most used feathers or hokkais, I was back using the plastics on a really light baitcaster. If you could get through the hordes of mackerel, there was, what was as good cod fishing as I have seen to be had. A phenomenal amount of fabulously coloured codling began to come aboard, 3 and 4 at a time in cases
Interspersed with these were the odd pollack and grey gurnard. When I say phenomenal, it had to be seen to be believed, drop a set of feathers down and if you made bottom they were just queuing up to get on the hook. Jellys and plastics however were totally ignored. Amazing fishing, it couldnt have been a better half hour or so in fairness. After finishing that drift, we steamed back around again for another go but sadly they appeared to have been fairly localised and nothing much showed. At that point, it now nearly 7pm, we turned tail and headed for port.A super day out was had, you couldnt have asked for better weather. Whilst the fishing during the day was slow, that last gasp half hour or so was unreal, many thanks to Mark for letting us stay out that bit longer. JD did the count on the scorecards and the results were announced. I won with my last ditch pouting and coalie haul in the final couple of minutes by 18 points followed by Blaker with JD in 3rd. Final scores are as follows:
Petekd 280 points
Blaker 262 points
JD 122 points
Great day out lads, looking forward to the next one. JD and co have pictures and I'm sure they will post them at some stage after the weekend.
Compliments to the Skipper by the way, Chieftain is a fine boat and Mark worked hard all day trying various things to get us into fish. It also has one of the most sensible things I have ever come across on a charter boat...a toilet sited at virtually waist level...anyone ever using a toilet on a charter knows what I mean
