House on the Sheep's Head
Today was a dull day with a freshening easterly wind that was threatening to make fishing difficult.
We started by spending an hour at a north coast rock mark on our way off the peninsula, just before low tide. It quickly became obvious there were no mullet in residence today, and with no guarantee any would turn up we stuck with Plan A and soon headed off back to Rosscarbery.
There was more water in the lagoon now on bigger tides, but it retained its brown tinge and apparent dearth of mullet. We tried an hour or so but soon moved to the estuary proper.
The wind was indeed troublesome, but I tucked myself down behind a grass bank and legered out into the shallow water in front of me. I did see occasional whelms but had not a single bite all afternoon.
Steve however is made of sterner stuff and sat in the wind legering into the deeper water where it flowed out of the lagoon.
He lost one fish after a lunging bite out of the blue, but was soon into this 3:15 which I netted for him after a great scrap.
Soon after that the new tide arrived, but it did not seem to bring any fish with it. Steve's swim died on him and mine never got going.
Close to giving up, we decided on a change for a last hour.
I decided to return to the lagoon but again didn't see a fish - very odd at this time of year. I put it down to the easterly wind rather than the water quality which although carrying its brownish tinge wasn't all that bad.
Steve meanwhile made the right call and headed down the estuary a little to fish from a small rocky peninsula on the west bank. He changed to float-fishing and was immediately troubled by hoardes of micro-mullet nibbling at his bait. He persevered and after a while his float plunged under amidst a cloud of scattering mullet fry and he found himself attached to a powerful fish that ran off forty yards of line in its initial run. This lovely 4:00 thick lip was waiting in the landing net for me to photograph when I arrived with the car to pick Steve up.
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