John Quinlan, bass angling guide reports on the first bass fishing for clients at the Thatch Cottage near Cahersiveen in Co. Kerry.
March – Our first customers of the year arrived on 16th March. Sadly, despite a promising start the weather was cold and windy with virtually no sunshine. Early in the season a little sunshine is always welcome as it warms the shallow water. At this time of year bass will always take advantage of warm water if they can find it.
In spite of the difficult conditions we managed to land around 30 bass, four seatrout and one pollack. The best bass was a little over 5 lbs. wih the bulk of the bass being between 3 and 4 lbs.
Jon Bond had one bass on fly. The rest of the fish were caught on a mixture of lure fishing or bait fishing. Michael Brazendale did well catching the best seatrout of 2.5 lbs. He also managed to land 6 bass on Saturday 24th.
Cian O’Halloran joined us on Wednesday with his friend, Paul. Cian runs an excellent tackle shop in Tramore, Co. Waterford catering solely for bass anglers. The shop is called Absolute Fishing and you can find it on the web on www.absolutefishingireland.blogspot.com . Cian is also organising Ireland’s first bass fishing festival in July, see the website www.irishbassfestival.com . This promises to be a very interesting event.
We have now finally managed to get some of the fine weather that England has enjoyed. This warm weather and sunshine should see a big improvement in the bass fishing. The bay seems to be full of sand eels at the moment. Gannets are working every day. Terns are showing up in greater numbers every day and he surf is full of cormorants feeding on the sand eels.
John Quinlan
Thatch Cottage Ireland
Kenneigh West
Cahersiveen
Co. Kerry
Tel: +353 (0)66 9474721
E-mail: [email protected]
