Donal Geary, Sea Fishing Cobh sends us this report:

On Saturday Morning in beautiful sunshine and no wind, we headed for the area north of the ling rocks. as my 5 English anglers wanted to do some species fishing.  A couple of the boys asked if maybe they could put out a shark trace while also bottom fishing. We started our drift about 2 miles north of the rocks and while the boys were immediately into the bottom fishing . I was setting up the 3 rods …with shark tackle and baloons. I also made a fine bag of rubby dubby with some mackeral left over from the previous day, some bran and fish oil from last year.

I was not very optimistic about our chances as I hadn’t heard of any blues been landed this year and also the scarcity of mackeral. The bottom fishing was good and getting better as we drifted slowly towards the rock, landing Ling, pollack, haddock, whiting, coalies, cod and some lovely red gurnard which I had for dinner that evening.
At about 2 o clock we were only about one mile off the rock the tide turned and we began to drift slowly back in the direction of Cork harbour.The bottom fishing was so good that the shark rods were forgotten until one of the ratchets let a scream and everyone rushed to get all the bottom gear in to give the shark a clear run but after the initail run he lost interest and came to the surface for a look around.
After about 20 minutes Barry’s rod took a good run and this time the fish was hooked,and after about 30 minutes of gentle coaxing with 30lb. braid an elated Barry boated his first ever blue shark of 60lbs. Steve and Paul had unsuccessful hookups before Barry again had a mighty scrap with a fish of 80lbs. which was boated and photographed before being released alive to the water. I arrived back at the pier in Cobh with 5 very satisfied and thirsty anglers.
On sunday the weather took a turn for the worst so we decided to stay within the shelter of the harbour and we had a very relaxing day. Fishing was poor as we were fishing an ebb tide for most of the day, between cups of Coffee and plenty of jokes we had a number of dabs, whiting and dogs before finishing the day with 3 Blonde rays to put the icing on the holiday for 5 very happy customers.
On Sunday night we met up again in Pauls (Ryans) where postmortems were held and most importantly dates were decided for a return in 2013.

Donal Geary (Skipper of the John Boy)

Phone: +353 21 481 2167

Web: www.sea-fishing-ireland.com

E-Mail: [email protected]