South Shore SAC hosted the prestigious Tommy Keogh Open last weekend, and as ever the club have a great report up on how it fished…
Yellow Weather Warnings for heavy rain failed to deter a superb turnout of over 60 hardy sea anglers for the Tommy Keogh Open! The Competition, now into it’s third year, has become a mainstay of the domestic Open Scene drawing competitors from all over the country, with anglers making the trip from Kerry & Cork in addition to the fantastic stalwarts that turn up to Leinster Competitions month in & month out!
An obvious part of the attraction is the fantastic prize fund, with €500 to the winner and €250 to the winner of the other zone. None of this would be possible without the generous sponsorship of the Keogh Family, who commemorate their Dad, Tommy, who a huge amount of the participants and members of Leinster Angling Fraternity remember with great fondness for his legendary wit, in addition to being a fantastic angler in his own right!
It is indeed here we will start the fishing report, as aforementioned sponsor Thomas (TC) Keogh pegged in Zone A on Ballinoulart looked like a sponsor that was short of a few bob and was flying up and down the beach making hey with a very quick start landing 8 bass in the first 2 hours. Jim O’Brien & Alan Mulcahy, both adjacent to Thomas were also ticking off bass at regular intervals. Visiting Angler Troy Francis (who’s in a fine run of form recently) was out of the traps early with a dog on his first 2 casts, followed by a super treble dog on his third cast that had all on the beach up taking notice!
In Zone B on the Morriscastle end of Ballinoulart, there was a decent battle developing between Noel & Ciaran Fogarty who were both fishing at distance as is mandated by the family name!! It was back and forth with dogfish and the odd smoothie with Paul Scanlon, Eric Gasparro & Willie Kett doing all in their power to hold on to the lads.
In the final shakeup, some late drama in Zone A; with Troy bagging a double smoothie on his last cast saw him take the zone from Thomas, with Jim O’Brien taking third in the zone. In Zone B, Noel Fogarty struck a blow for his generation as he defeated Ciaran (his nephew) by taking out the zone and the Overall Tommy Keogh Open with a good bag of 10 fish including 4 or 5 good smoothies in that catch. Ciaran was second and Paul Scanlon took third in the zone.
The pools were pretty impressive too – with Zone A taken out by Troy Francis with a last cast Smoothie of 76cm, and the flat was Brian Byrnes 36cm Flounder. Zone B was Noel Fogarty’s excellent 92cm Hound taking the round with tied flounder of 28cm for Eric Gasparro & Lar Mooney. The ever improving Luke Kinsella of Ringsend & Irishtown took out the Junior Prize!
All prizes will be presented at the prize giving of the Mick Kearney Open on September 13th. Finally, on behalf of all the participants and Organisers Southshore SAC, we would like to thank the Keogh Family for their fantastic support & continued sponsorship of this fantastic event!
