Bill and Charlie Demery did a couple of fishing trips on Saturday 30th June with not so spectacular results but something at least….
On the early incoming tide we decided to do a spot of mackerel fishing at Collymore harbour for some spare bait and a nice barbecue. The season isn’t in full swing but they’re still around. All in all about 15-20 mackerel were caught in the harbour at the morning tide, with us catching 2 but only landing 1 (but decent-sized). Later on, at full low tide we made our way to a beach (not naming it because it was where I was bait digging as you will see) and Charlie went kitesurfing. With the free time I had, I took the opportunity to go bait digging for a while so I dug one ‘uber-long’ trench and a couple more smaller trenches after in search of a silver bed with no luck. But I had yielded too many lugworm and I even had to throw some back into the sand seeing as I had enough bait. I passed the time watching the few lugs that I threw back into the sand burrow, which was a bit like watching paint dry but they eventually made it.
As the evening pushed on, we decided to move on to Dun laoghaire’s east pier on the outside to use up our bait for whatever we could catch like codling, lesser spotted dogs, pollack, coalfish, or whatever else. After about only ten minutes I got a strike. I got a bit excited and jumped to the rod to set the hook tugging at the line to get the gripper lead out (which was quite firmly in the ground) and played her in. As I got my first glimpse I thought it was a pollack, she then swam out of sight. I wound back in the lost line and pulled it in a bit further and saw it was a ballan wrasse! It resisted being wound in for a sec but then I landed her. She was at least a pound and a half but could be a tiny bit larger. I didn’t weigh it though, so I can’t be sure.
It was too shallow to release her from dry land so I had to take off my shoes and socks and wade out (soaking my land shorts) and let her go.
Anyway, I’m pleased to add another fish to my years species count (which isn’t huge so far) and I look forward to more fishing over the summer.
Report compliments of Bill Demery
