Hi all
Is it just here (Kerry), or have the pollack and coalfish numbers collapsed? Sure you can still catch big fish from the really gnarly shore and boat marks, but the days of using huge lures (to avoid smaller fish), and catching enough in an hour to feed me and the dog for a month, are over? I've been told that there's no quota for pollack and we've seen boats trolling the reefs and taking hundreds of juvenile pollack/coalfish. As for coalfish, I caught my first this year last week. They used to be everywhere, all year, making beach fishing and feathering up some mackerel a pain at times. Then there's the mackerel. The governments tell us, that with the Atlantic warming, they now range to the extreme North therefore making the stock more spread out and reducing stock in any given area. By my thinking, if they are migrating further North in increased temperatures, we should catch them earlier in the year. We now struggle to catch any numbers before August?