August Update

Early in the month I did a couple of sessions on the trigger fish mark, but there was no sign of a trigger.

The many bites all proved to be wrasse, a few modest ballans but mostly pretty little corkwings.

The weather hasn't really settled down long enough since to warrant another go but hopefully we'll get a calm spell in September.. 

Another failure has been the gilthead fishing. I've had a few goes across the month when conditions have seemed okay, but drawn a complete blank on the gilts. My Facebook friend Jason has had a couple of real crackers this month but it's very hit and miss this time of year and ... I've missed. The bycatch has been several schoolie bass but only one that was sizeable, just barely. I was debating whether I could reasonably whack it to take home for dinner when the IFI inspector's van pulled up on the road behind me. I decided I could do without the discussion and put it back!

I also had one session on the Airstrip Strand but that was at the peak of the brown water and I didn't get a sniff on the bottom baits. Surprisingly there was some surface activity - a nice sea trout on the go, a couple of decent mullet bow-waved by close in, and against the odds a couple of mackerel emerged from the sepia water on my mackerel feathers to supplement my bait supply. 

The mackerel fishing has actually been spectacular every time the water's been reasonably clear, with big shoals in both Dunmanus and Bantry Bays and some numbers of porpoises, dolphins and minke whales followed them in. I caught my first glimpse of a fin whale in Bantry Bay and there have been humpbacks in close too on the right day.

I've had a few sessions catching mackerel for eating and to top up the bait freezer. There have been a few big launce mixed in with the mackerel too, also a welcome addition to bait stocks.

Towards the end of the month I fished a night session from the pier just local.

It was desperately slow on the bottom baits with just one small poor cod on a scratching rig and one non-commital pull on a mackerel head bait that came to nothing.

I was surprised though that a new solar power LED street lamp has been installed on the pier, given it's out in the middle of nowhere and I've never seen anyone else using it at night. 

There was a good bit of fishy activity under the light. Some fish were obviously pollack from their bronze colour, and there were a lot that turned out to be small scad - I didn't have any feathers with me but had a couple just jigging a two-hook paternoster baited with slivers of mackerel. Occasionally I'd see a bigger, pale fish ghost through a bit deeper, I don't know if larger scad or maybe mullet. Dead on high tide the water suddenly turned black as a shoal of mackerel moved in. I foul-hooked one in the tail and in a few seconds they were gone again into the night.

Anyway, I had some fresh bait to use next morning and headed out on the rocks not far from the pier, on the lee side of a headland as Storm Francis was still winding down. It wasn't a hectic session but I had a little burst of activity just before HW when one huss let go after a few yards then I had another (or possibly the same one) a few minutes later. It weighed dead on 10lbs and had taken a mackerel/scad cocktail...

And so on to mullet ...

Early in the month while my knee was still iffy I did a couple of short trips down onto my low-water rock mark in Bantry Bay. It's only a short hop (!) from the car and although it looks rugged I have a fairly flat spot to fish from.

There were plenty of mullet about giving plenty of bites, and I soon had my August mullet in the net, in fact six of them across the two trips, mostly on fish baits. As usual these weren't the biggest of fish, generally 2 - 3lbs size, but they still give the centrepin a good workout.

Later in the month I headed back, to be greeted by an extraordinary sight - the normally gin clear water had turned green and turbid.

We'd been seeing patches of what looked like yellow/green water out in the bay for a couple of weeks, but this was the first close-up encounter after a day or two of north-west wind had brought a large patch inshore. I can only imagine it's algae gone mad with nutrients run off from the land by all the rain this month when the water's just about at its warmest. The farmers routinely spray their silage fields with cattle slurry after each cut of the grass, I'd think a lot of that has ended up in the sea recently.

Fortunately, unlike brown peaty water, it didn't seem to have any negative effect on the fishing. I had a string of half-pound pollack that seemed to have appeared from nowhere on this mark, and four chunky mullet.

In the event there wasn't too long to wait, and after twenty minutes or so my right hand rod nodded then pulled over. It didn't feel a particularly large fish but I didn't really have much opportunity to tell, the mullet swirled on the surface and was off.

Next cast, a repeat performance with the same outcome.

A few minutes later I was in again on the same rod. This fish came in quite easily but any illusion it was small was dispelled when it plunged into the deep water in front of the bridge and put up a stubborn resistance for a good five or six minutes. It weighed 4:13.

Soon I had another fish on, this time on the left rod. This one also came in easily then came off at the edge. At this stage I was 3 - 1 down to the mullet and the session was shaping up as a bit of a 'mare. Fortunately though bites kept coming and I turned it round, finishing 3 - 5. Three of the further mullet were also four-pounders - another 4:13, 4:07 and yet another 4:13. I'm fairly sure this third 4:13 was a repeat capture of the first, about four hours between; at least, it had a fresh hook wound in about the right place.