Martyn Rayner of Boat Angling Ireland heads to the Rosslare Small Boats competition and reports:
As with all these competitions, many of you will be familiar with the watching of every forecast available leading up to a trip at sea, Rosslare was no exception, and after a fantastic summer all the omens were pointing to the weather breaking down for the Rosslare week.
I arrived on Friday to give myself a chance to get settled in and bait sorted , Saturday was looking like a lovely day for fishing, and I decided to go for a spin out of Kilmore to work up Neville, who had been absent from the fishing scene for a few months ! So a good chance to get him worked up to the frenzy of species hunting.
We had a great day, with a number of nice fish, and a couple of fresh bass for supper to boot, trouble was we knew that the forecast for the rest of the week was looking bleak.
Saturday night saw the competition briefing and it was announced that we would be fishing out of Rosslare safe on Sunday, and it would be restricted inshore between Rosslare point and Carne. It still left a large area to fish, but with limited species available.
The day was not too bad with a lumpy sea in places, especially around the Splough rock, but we had a steady start bagging 8 important species including a bonus shore rockling.
Monday was decided to be the rest day as the wind was very fresh, and a shore roving species comp was held. This was a great bit of fun, and we managed to win the day with 7 species, though it was not without incident when I spent 2 hours trying to wade through lots of small mackerel off the hook trying to get one in size, on the last cast I got one at 31cm, delighted, only to find out, the min size was 20cm, !!**$%, The lads had great pleasure in letting me know this , rule one, check the size limits before starting !!!!
Wednesday saw our first day out of Kilmore, but again had to be restricted to the east of the little Saltee, and inshore only because of the wind and swell. It still opens up a big area though, and after a very busy day we had managed to pick up 17 species, a great result considering the conditions. This left us on 19 species, so a good sound start to the comp.
Thursday was again a windy day, so again we fished from the safe, but with a restriction of just Rosslare bay, this really limited the fishing, and conditions at times were brutal to the body !, but we still had a couple of species to get from the area, and we managed to add a smoothound and a Goby, happy days.
The final day dawned bright and calm, at last, a lovely day and it was going to open up the comp completely with boats being unrestricted. As with all days we had a plan, and it was to head offshore to try and pick up a haddock and garfish, but, this year they let us down. As with all these comps you do need an element of luck, and whilst on the drift for haddock, Seirt pulled up a lovely 12lb Thornback, a bonus species, he also had a fine tub gurnard of 4.2lbs, a fine fish indeed. As the day wore on we were not looking good, having only added a few of our target species, so we took a risk and went for species that were our ( desperate only ) category !!, well bass was the first, tide wrong, conditions wrong etc etc, but first drift, seirt and Neville connected, and the bass was in the bag. Next was a dragonet, but this one proved elusive for us so we moved on to go for Huss, we knew that if we got one more species it would put us in with a shout for the win, but after an hour on the mark, nothing, not even a doggie the pressure was mounting. Just at that point, Seirt connected with a big fish, and to the net cam a nice Huss, shortly followed by a much bigger one on his second rod ! Happy days, we gave the last half an hour over to try for a flounder but no luck, and headed back to harbour with a grand total of the week of 27 Species.
As we have found with these comps, the last day can be funny, and when you think you have had a bad day, well so can other people ! But we had heard that one boat JAY JAY had added 11 or possibly 12 species on the last day, a fantastic result for them, and we had no idea if we had won or not. So that evening we headed to the prize giving none the wiser. There was a buzz around the hall when the results were put up on the wall, and then realised we had won , we were delighted with the news, our hat trick .
The prize giving was a fantastic night, with a super prize table, and run like clockwork, the evening was rounded off by Meano and his poem dedicated to all the F… Ups that happen during the week.
This year Saw John Belger run the event for the first time, and we would like to thank him for a very well run event , with many tough decisions to be made regarding the weather and fishing. Well done John. We would also like to thank the sponsors of this event, without which it would not be possible.
We look forward to next year with excitement , Role on 2014 !!
Well For Team Screaming it was the first of a two week fishathon, and there was no time to celebrate as we had to pack up all the gear and fridges freezers etc, and move on to Cork !
Read Martyn’s Cork adventure ‘Here’
Report courtesy of www.boat-angling-ireland.com
