Maintenance

One of the many off-season tasks facing charter skippers is boat maintenance. Sometimes that can be fairly routine, sometimes it can involve a full engine refit, or major overhaul to the boat and electronics. All charter boats are inspected by the Department of Transport on an annual basis, with the emphasis on passenger safety, so having this maintenance done is important both for safety as well as making sure the boat is running as efficiently as possible. If you are considering a charter boat trip this year, make sure it is a licensed vessel for the best guarantee of safety. You can check out all the licensed charter boats around the coast on our website here.

Skipper John Fleming took his boat, the Brazen Hussy II, down the west coast to the Shannon Estuary for some work in the boatyard this week. He took advantage of the fine weather, with almost flat calm conditions for most of the trip.

 

Passing Loop Head (we think!)
A flat calm Shannon Estuary at Moneypoint

Season Ahead

Once the maintenance is complete, John is hoping to start his season in late February or early March. We’ll leave it to John to describe what guests on board can target throughout the season:

Starting off with some whitefish, pollock, cod, coalies, whiting and haddock. We will still continue to target these during the full season.
Spurs should start showing in early April so going to hit them around then with usually a good chance of specimen fish.
We will be starting to target tope in early to mid May.
Then from end of June until roughly mid August it will be time for porbeagles, hopefully it will be as good as the last couple of years. Really fast action with some big days numbers wise. With the rest of the summer until mid October being good for blues, again some nice fish being caught.
Hopefully also we will be targeting Atlantic bluefin tuna this year.
Accommodation can be arranged in a local B&B with some great restaurants and pubs for great food and craic!
So if any of you fancy a trip don’t hesitate to contact me and here’s to hopefully another great season.

 

Plan Your Season

Many charter skippers diaries will be starting to fill up with bookings now, particularly the summer months, weekends and popular holiday times. Now is the time to plan a few trips, get your friends on board and book with a skipper or three for a few outings throughout the year. Check out our listings for charter boats around Ireland here and search our angling reports here for previous years’ updates to give you an idea of what you can expect. Don’t forget to sign up for the Irish Angling Update, a weekly roundup of the best fishing stories from around Ireland, direct to your inbox!

 

Ahoy Skippers

We are always happy to feature reports from licensed charter skippers on these pages, so we welcome all contributions and photos that might help anglers to choose your boat for their next trip!

 

Go fishing…

To book fishing with John aboard the Brazen Hussy II, give him a call on 087 7571320

A regular day is between 9am- 6pm from either Rossaveal, Spiddal or Galway depending on species being sought after. Fishing on the inshore reefs for pollock, cod, ling, wrasse, conger eel and mackerel can be reached in 10 minutes from departure, while our offshore reef marks are within 45 minutes of departure. Our ground fishing for tope, spurdog, ray, bullhuss, turbot, plaice and the giant common skate can all be reached within the hour which ensures the most amount of time is spent fishing.
The shark season usually starts at the end of June and runs into late October, this is the ultimate angling adrenaline rush with these hard fighting blue and porbeagle sharks all being tagged and released safely.
Package deals available

Address: Baile an tSagairt, Spiddal, Co. Galway.
Telephone: +353 (0)87 7571320
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BlueSharkAngling

Blue Shark Angling Galway,
Phone John Fleming : +353 (0)87 7571320