February Report

Just a brief report this month - we were away from the 5th visiting family and friends in England, and I returned on the 18th to a monumental stack of exam scripts awaiting marking. So just a couple of short mullet trips to record...

I was keen to get a February mullet under my belt for 47 months consecutive before we went away, so on the 2nd I headed down onto the Mizen. The two storms near the end of January and another deluge last night ensured the water was higher than usual and weak-coffee colour.

There wasn't a sign of a mullet and the big shoal present in January seemed to be gone. Fortunately however a few stragglers had been left behind, and I had a smattering of bites fishing deeper than usual, just off bottom.

I landed three mullet. They were no great shakes sizewise - 2:04, 2:08 and 2:14 - but they were February mullet so job done.

Back from England, a start made on the marking, and on the 25th I joined my old friend Mike Buckley back on the Mizen. Mike was recently arrived for a month stay in his motorhome and was hoping to latch into some of the quality winter mullet fishing West Cork has to offer.

Mike had already had a couple of very productive sessions at today's mark, landing fifteen mullet each day with a smattering of bigger ones to 4:14.

There was plenty of surface activity today though the numbers seemed to be down on Mike's previous visits. Probably that was to do with the conditions - a cold west wind and squally showers between the sunny spells - but maybe also the fish were wising up to being caught. Certainly they seemed to be mostly hanging out at distance with relatively few showing close in.

We did okay though - missing a lot of bites but hitting a few and ending up with seven mullet each. Either the bigger fish had moved on or we just didn't connect with them, each of us had a best of 3:12 with most of them 2s and low 3s.

Unfortunately the "brief" theme is likely to continue over the next couple of months. I have the marking to finish then cataract operations, left eye mid-March and right eye mid-April. I don't really know about the recovery time but I'm guessing I'll need to take it easy for a few days at least after each op. Hopefully I'll fit in a few sessions.