Reports: April 2008 (Eoghan)

myself and jonty decided a couple of months ago that a trip to the south west coast of ireland was in order. we booked the flights, the car hire, and the accomodation within days, then jonty did the tedious job of trawling through the reports on the irish forums finding out what species were showing, and the marks to fish, also planning the sessions around the tides not forgeting to have alternatives depending on the weather. jonty's vast local knowledge of the area was invaluable and the thought of going over there to fish without it would have proved a waste of time. the rods and tri-pods were sent over by courier a month before our departure, large numbers of rigs were made, reels cleaned and fresh line put on. finaly the day came and off to the airport we went.

the first view of the shannon

once we landed at shannon airport we then had a three hour plus car journey down to dingle, so we settled for feathering for some fresh mack at brandon harbour


"jonty first chuck" had full strings of mack before i had chance to set up, we had enough to fish saturday, and sunday in about twenty minutes so we had couple of pints in here
then back to the hostel, dumped the bags and went for a few more
to be continued :lol: :lol: :lol: saturday 24/5/2008 after a 0600 wake up call from john, and a weather/wind check slea head was decided as the venue for today after a monster walk over the hill we finally got to the mark (far left of the picture below) the "small" island at the far left of the picture can be put into context in the pictures below the picture below shows the start of the walk back we set up two rods each, one for wrasse baited with crab, and a spinning rod with pearl sidewinders for pollock. then waited, initially things didn't look too great but then the bites started coming jonty with the first pollock of the day i had started to despair, but my pollock soon came the pollock once they started feeding were prolific, then we turned our attentions to the wrasse a brilliant days fishing, in fact the best! a big thanks to jonty for showing me a top mark that he found through pure legwork....cheers mate sunday 25/5/2008 after being cruelly awoken at 0540 by the slave driver a quick look out of the window revealed the weather, 25-30 mph north-easterly winds............not good at all. jonty had planned a trip to either dun an oir for the bigger pollock and wrasse, or derrymore strand for stingrays and tope. after a quick re-think he decided on beenbane. two hours later and not a single bite.......not looking good after a re-think we moved to dingle lighthouse at last after another trek, but nothing like slea-head we were out of the wind and the sun was beating down the fist thornback followed by this critter.....on a crab bait on a light spinning rod...lol another thornie for jonty well next fish was mine..... a bloomin dog mr "first-chuck" set up a float rig.......and as the nickname says.....had this garfish, shortly after i had a better pollock a pic of the mark looking towards dingle harbour another pollock for me yippee, at last my thornie jonty unhooking one of his 9 thornies.......greedy git lol another.....yawn and another it ended up a cracking day after all.... a big thanks to jonty for putting me on to the marks, cheers mate, and thanks for all the hints, tips and advice over the past few months....anyone who would ignore advice off a top angler would be an utter fool. also a really big thanks to jonty's family in cloghane for the hospitality, and the venison roast yum yum, nice view from the kitchen by the way