Five at Rosscarbery

I arrived at Rosscarbery at midday, just as the sun was breaking through the morning mist. The east wind that had persisted all week was noticeably light.

I could see fish moving around in the shallows in front of me but there was less water in the pool than the other times I've been down recently so there didn't seem any prospect of them coming within floatfishing range. I set up two leger rods and cast a pop-up crust bait well out on each.

I was getting knocks on the tips almost immediately though some would definitely have been line-bites. After fifteen minutes or so the left hand tip pulled right round, and I soon landed my first of the day at 3lb 3oz.

Over the next couple of hours bites kept coming regularly and I landed three more mullet of 3:01, 3:10 and this one of 3:15. Two others came adrift as they ploughed around through the shallows.

Whether  because of the disturbance or because of the colder sea water starting to flood into the pool, I started to see fewer fish and bites gradually dried up.

Still, I kept fresh baits going out and some half hour or so after the last movement on one of the tips, the left hand tip pulled over.

This was obviously a much bigger fish than any I'd caught today or on my other trips this year. It ran out powerfully and hung out in the middle of the pool for what seemed ages before starting to come back ever-so grudgingly.

On this lower tide I'd been struggling to reach down the wall with my net to land fish - longer handle required! I didn't want to risk messing up netting this fish so I walked round gradually to my left, keeping a good tension in the line, until I reached a spot where I could jump down from the wall onto the foreshore and beach the mullet in the edge.

It was so broad across the back I thought it might go six pounds but the scales settled on 5lb 12oz and I am delighted with that as it's my PB from Co Cork.