By 9am Sunday morning, Glenn Drennan, Phil Oliver and Terry Jackson were standing on Benone Strand, the beautiful surf beach on the northernmost reaches of Northern Ireland, looking across to Donegal, Moville and adjacent to the large commercial fishing port of Greencastle. To explain, Glenn had won a beach outfit in a small competition, and although an accomplished angler, he had yet to try this discipline of our sport. Big Phil and Terry took it upon themselves to give Glenn a crash course in tackling a typical surf beach.
The surf looked good, with reasonable clarity and no annoying weed or dangerous surges pushing up the beach. In these ideal conditions, a simple over-head lob of around thirty yards is all that is required. In a stable surf, flounder and bass will hug the shore-line picking up anything edible or injured, dislodged by the crashing breakers. Glenn had been pre-warned that the seasonally severe drop in temperature during these bleak winter months usually drives any remaining species off-shore into deeper water, and he should not to expect too much; a blank session when shore angling in mid-winter is unfortunately all too common, and believe me, today was bloody cold!
As if to make Terry eat his words, Glenn’s first cast produced a series of thumping nods on the new rod and he was soon into his first beach-caught species. It certainly wasn’t a flounder bite and we guessed either a bass or out of season sea trout…….read the full article…..20/03/12….. http://www.eu.purefishing.com/blogs/uk/terry-jackson/2012/03/20/66/
