HOBBIES

Summer fishing - A trip away...

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Myself and Michael teamed up for a bit of away fishing this week and worked hard for what were initially meager results - not unusual as you try to tune to new area but in peak season high water temps and the first southerly in living memory hopes were very high indeed especially when things looked so promising on arrival at our chosen locations but the numbers showed a return way below what we hoped for. Despite this we soldiered on, fished all the hours, managed to land a few decent fish over the couple of days and had a lot of laughs along the way...

Taking the plunge...

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Just working...

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Fished a couple of hours last night without much to show for it (Just one fish) but I enjoyed it. The sea state ranged from flat as a mill pond to a 6 inch wave, the tide was a neap high, the water crystal clear with a bit of lettuce weed in places. I opted to stick with first lure pattern I tried all evening Hawg Wild 6" rigged either weightless or with a Gamakatsu Worm EWG Weighted Spring Lock 4/0 3.5g Hook which is unusual for me but I felt it suited the conditions and the style in which I wanted to fish perfectly. I enjoyed using the cover of darkness to fish different angles in the areas I know so well from my daytime fishing. I also enjoyed working the soft plastic in 10 or more different ways, a nice contrast to the casting and winding of late with the bigger minnow patterns we've been using for our night fishing. So not much of a result for my efforts but by mixing it up I kept it interesting for myself. At the moment, although the reverse can be the case, my confidence in my own fishing is high - my confidence in the fishery is low. Can't wait to see what the next gentle S or SW brings...

That's (A bit) better...

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With the arrival of Padraig from Tuam a couple of days ago my unofficial "Guiding" season began and in all honesty I wasn't expecting much from the day game having proved to myself too often this summer that fish are too few and far between to make it worthwhile. The first mission proved this reasoning, three prime locations were fished at key times to no avail so plans were made join the night shift. Our first night session was poor with only one fish between us in a 2 hr session but lessons were learned and we repeated our plan on the second evening with better results. When I arrive for a night session I prefer to arrive at dusk, settle in and asses the conditions while its still light, I also like to start by fishing at range my theory being that the fish gain confidence and move into the shallows to hunt as the night progresses. Typically I use smaller subtle metals and flutter type baits that also allow me to fish the water column from top to bottom and probe any known or unknown gullies and other variations in depth and the plan worked from the off with first fish coming to a 25g Tackle House

Pboy jig in Sandeel pattern which perfectly "matched the hatch" of Sandeels which disturbed the surface in their thousands around our feet as the small wave rolled into the strand that only hours previously was thronging with holiday makers. Now it was all ours, ours and the natural world's. We moved along the strand and the second fish came just as the light was fading, I'd followed my plan and stepped up slightly in size to the smaller brother of my favourite IMA Barbarossa 120, the 95, rigged with the standard trebles rather than my usual assist hook setup (See above). Sometimes you carry a lure for ages just waiting for the right situation to unleash it this was one of those occasions with the 95. Encouraged we moved on to another strand as I felt the good conditions of the previous days had improved even further with the light onshore breeze and cloud cover hiding the moon helping the light levels to drop quickly. As an aside it was interesting to note the abundance of tiny fluorescent charged life forms on the leading edge of the surf that had been completely absent the night before, I have no idea why. At the second strand after various changes we stepped up to large shallow running minnows in the form of Daiwa shore line shiner 17 F-G's which resulted in the best fish of the night, things were really going to plan at this stage but as time pushed on and no further action occurred we decided to call it a night. To be continued (Tonight) ;-)