Mick Barry reports on the 2nd leg of the Leinster League Closed Gold Boat hosted by Eastern Command SAC at Kilmore Quay earlier in July…
As the first leg of the Leinster League Closed Gold Boat, run by Balbriggan SAC, was a huge success, the second leg had a lot to live up too. This was the first major event to be run by the Eastern Command SAC, a club made up by members of the Defence Forces.
Eamon Hayes was the point of contact in Kilmore Quay. Eamon is the skipper of the Autumn Dream and made the organisers life real easy by securing enough boats for the competition, he even had Joe Byrne of Courtown Angling Centre bring his boat, The Brazen Hussey, round for the weekend.
Dave McBride in Southside Angling hosted the boat draw from his shop on the Thursday and we even got him to smile as we bought some tackle while we were there.
Fortunately for us the 7th of July was the first day of the fine weather, with a cloudless sky, soaring temperatures and a gentle sea breeze it had all the makings of a great day’s angling.
As the anglers started to arrive for check in, most had already seen the boat draw on the Shamrock Fishing Tackle Facebook Page, which helped things run smoothly. This was a bring your own bait event and anglers were restricted to using ragworm and mackerel only. Thankfully the skippers had notified us well in advance that mackerel was in short supply, in fact only 2 were caught for the day.
As the angling got underway, some of the big gun’s were drawn together, namely Terry Boyle vs Shay McDonnell, Liam O’Callaghan vs Myles Howell, Mick Barry vs Joe Byrne and Paddy Swan vs Brian Whelan. It was apparent that these matches would ultimately decide who the top finishers were going to be and also bring the anglers one step closer to making that coveted Leinster boat team and collecting the Gold Medal. The fishing on the day could only be described as awesome, with some 1877 fish coming to the measure of 25cm, made up of 10 different species mainly pollack, ballan wrasse and cuckoo wrasse. This averaged out at over 40 fish per angler. With the anchor session proving more fruitful, mainly to the use of the long Artico rods and the new scratching rig from Cox & Rawle, which landed Martin Kennedy of Shamrock Tackle the main sponsor of the event with a fine specimen ballan wrasse.
As the day ended and the boats made their way to the harbour, we were met by the crowds that had flocked to the small picturesque village of Kilmore Quay, which was hosting an annual festival. The town was buzzing, candyfloss and icecream in all the kids’ hands, while the parents were skipping around all the wonderful stalls. This made the usual banter between anglers of seeing who won a little more challenging,
But it wasn’t long before the results were completed, with four anglers finishing on top marks only to be separated by a count back and finishing in the following order.
- 1st Terry Boyle 200%
- 2nd Liam O’Callaghan 200%
- 3rd Mick Barry 200%
- 4th Paddy Swan 200%
With the final leg of the Closed Boat League being fished on August 17th all eyes will be on Terry Boyle as he has successfully won both legs so far and has been placed as hot favourite to captain the Leinster team in next year’s Findlater cup.
