Evan McGovern reports from the Cork Small Boats Festival 2019…
This year’s festival was fished from the 13th – 20th September. The week started out well with the usual BBQ in the Long Point Pub on the Friday before the festival, and the registration night taking place in Trabolgan Holiday Village the following night. Boats arrived from England, Wales and from all around Ireland.
Everyone was optimistic about the week ahead with the forecasts telling us that we were in for a decent spell of weather. Fishing started on the morning of the 16th and we fished straight through the week and were unrestricted by weather. The festival is a species hunt competition and there are also prizes for individual days, selected species and so on. There were high scores coming in from day one as some boats chose to head offshore.
It was a tough battle in the top spots over the week and it finished up very close with Escapade in first plaice with 32 species and Goldilocks in second with 31 species. We had great support and sponsorship from local businesses.
Catches during the week included plenty of decent cod and bass, a few haddock which are somewhat of a rarity these days around cork, megrim, plenty of nice thornback and painted ray, a large number of smoothhound which have only become a regular catch in cork in very recent years and Anglerfish also.
It was great to see some of the old faces returning year on year, a few boats returning after a couple of years absence and a good number of new boats joining the fleet.
Thank you to our sponsors
The sponsors for the event included Daiwa, Lowrance, Inland Fisheries Ireland, Trabolgan Holiday Village, and Bella Vista Hotel. There is a full list of all sponsors on our facebook group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/corksmallboats/
Go fishing…
Next years festival will be fished from the 11th – 18th September. All information is available from the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/corksmallboats/
