House on the Sheep's Head
Well this won't take long!
I only found time for one session ahead of our UK trip, on the 7th. The previous night was very cold - I had to scrape a thick frost off the car and the air temperature was -3degC for most of the drive down to Rosscarbery. The tides were very neap so the water in the estuary pool was shallow, probably with little salt content, and the bottom half of the pool was actually frozen over when I arrived! There was no obvious sign of mullety activity in the rest of the pool.
I set up to fish the slightly deeper water in front of the bridge arch hoping it might be hiding a few mullet; though I was dubious about the flow of water out of the lagoon that must have been borderline freezing because the lagoon itself was completely iced over.
The morning passed without a twitch on the tips. Into the afternoon I did see a few mullet moving, though they seemed to be paddling round lazily not feeding. I had a tiny drop-back on one tip and a couple of plucks on the other that looked like they could develop, but didn't.
We were back from UK on the 23rd. I had plans to fish on Christmas Eve but it was way too wet and windy. Christmas Day was better, mild and a gentle west breeze, but I'm not that fanatical ... meanwhile Jason fished at Ross and caught eight mullet to 5lb 1oz, mostly on maddies, and lost a rod when another mullet pulled it over the wall. He reported the venue was full of mullet, which was encouraging, but looking at the forecast it was almost uniformly grim now right through to New Year. The best bet seemed to be St Stephen's Day morning which looked reasonably calm and dry ahead of the arrival of Storm Gerrit during the afternoon.
Unfortunately it had been another cold night. The car was giving me ice warnings on the drive down to Ross and the air temperature was only 3degC on arrival. On the plus side it was flat calm and I soon found a big shoal of mullet in the shallow water on the east side of the bridge. However, despite Jason's haul yesterday, I doubted they'd feed much till the day warmed up a bit.
I spent a frustrating morning with two legered crust baits out being steadfastly ignored by the mullet swimming all round them. Around lunchtime I started getting one or two tentative little pulls, then one which seemed slightly more persistent. I struck and connected ... it was only small, barely making 2lbs, but I was delighted with a December mullet for my 33rd consecutive month.
Soon after an east breeze sprang up and freshened as the cloud cover thickened and occasional spots of rain fell. I got the brolly up and fished on a while, though I wasn't very hopeful of further action as from the scores of mullet that had been swimming in front not a single one was showing now. I think most of them had moved on but I guessed a few stragglers may be left. Out of the blue, well grey really, I had a nice solid bite and a spirited fight from a mullet about 3:08.
The very next cast I was in again, but the smallish mullet came off after a few seconds. Before long rain started rattling into the back of the brolly, it was only 2.30pm but almost dark and with conditions deteriorating rapidly ahead of the storm it was time to head home.
A very Happy New Year to my blog readers...
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