The Eire Bass guide Richie Ryan sent us a report on his outings this week. Richie takes up the story.
The bass season has picked up here in Cork Harbour as the water warms up. We know from our acoustic tagging program that most of the bass have returned to their old feeding grounds. Site fidelity was a big lesson we learned back then. If you take a bass from a mark every time you catch one then for sure you’ll be very disappointed with your sport in later years.
Just like last year there are plenty of small bass around which of course is a good sign. Sven Scholz from Germany and Flavia Paradiso from Switzerland were very happy with their few small bass over the May Bank holiday. Super sub Tim Murrell arrived in on a cruise liner to brighten up my day and he managed to land a few bass. I enjoyed a few sessions with Jacques Bronkhorst and Jean Marias also. To quote Jacques “after the initial pleasantries ” we fell into our usual banter and slagging with the Doc telling Jean to be very careful releasing fish over the side as his beard might get caught in the propeller.
Plenty of small fly caught bass were released as were some fine big pollack. On one of the sessions I caught a large beautiful spider crab on the fly. It’s hard to tell whether he grabbed the fly as it was passing his nose or if I just snagged him, but if you haven’t tried one they’re as nice to eat as lobster anytime. And so the season starts for me. Let’s hope it’s not as windy as last year !
