Ray fishing has been on fire at times over the last few weeks in Tralee Bay, with some amazing fish landed by shore anglers. Tralee Bay is a special place where you can target several species of ray, from the humble thornback, to the beautifully marked undulate, the hard-fighting painted ray, and the mighty sting ray.
On Good Friday Martin McGowan, owner of the Angling Hub tackle shop in Tralee had a session with some friends, which turned out to be what Martin described as “If Carlsberg did fishing trips”! As well as some nice undulate ray, the sting ray were feeding too, and Martin had a cracking 57lbs fish.
That wasn’t the best ray of the day, however, that honour going to Aidan O’Sullivan with an amazing 62lbs fish!
Chris O’Sullivan, who has also featured in these pages on many occasions as the creator of many great videos on The Inshore Angler Youtube channel, also had a specimen undulate ray recently that he made a short video about. Check it out below or over on Youtube here.
That’s not the half of the good fishing news, however. It’s not every day we hear of angel shark (also called monkfish) being caught from the shore, but Ger Hennessy did just that, and it wasn’t any old angel shark, it was a monster! Fair play to Ger on a fine capture, and for releasing what is these days a very rare catch.
We have also regularly featured the lads from Irish Angling Adventures, indeed James’s video from last year of a Tralee Bay grand slam was one of the top videos we watched.
Well James was fishing with that man again, Ger Hennessy, and they had a fantastic session, landing 5 specimen sting ray, as well as 4 undulate ray. Ger was favoured by the angling gods again with the biggest stinger, a monstyer of 131cm, and the biggest either had ever seen from Tralee Bay!
Most of the above anglers also fished the recent Tag-A-Ray competition, hosted by Tralee Bay SAC, which saw anglers fishing all over the bay over 2 days targeting various ray species.
This saw Ian and James, the Irish Angling Adventures guys again, both getting in amongst the fish, with this lovely undulate ray one of Ian’s catch that landed him 3rd on Day 2.
James didn’t do too badly either, finishing 3rd overall with a stinger, thornie and undulate ray.
The overall shore prize was won by Fiachra Cronin, who also took the honours for Day 1.
2nd shore angler was that man Chris O’Sullivan, and third was James Raymond.
The leading boat angler was Kieran Crane,, second was Tom McAdam and third was Richie Keller.
The junior section was very generously sponsored by Martin and Tanya in the Angling Hub to the tune of over €500(!). The top prizes in the junior section were as follows:
Go Fishing
The Angling Hub is a fantastic tackle shop in Tralee that we have used on many occasions, catering especially to sea anglers but with plenty of gear for other disciplines. For all your bait and tackle needs when visiting the area, look no further, and they have an extensive online catalogue too, with excellent fast delivery.
