Kevin McGowan is a man on a mission. Or he was, until last week. A mission to catch a blonde ray from the shore. Not the most common catch, blonde ray favour deeper water than other ray species, and are occasionally caught by boat anglers, but only in certain, well-guarded secret marks. We had never heard of one caught from the shore, but that is what Kevin was determined to do. We’ll let him tell the story in his own words…
I’d been wanting to find out if you could catch these beauties around the Irish coast for a long time I even went as far as Donegal from Cork to have a go but nothing,
After a few phone calls a friend of mine told me he was diving in a spot and saw a few of these giants sitting on the bottom close to shore so it was all I thought about .
Three weeks ago I decided to try the area which I love fishing from and I decided on the Wednesday night I’d drive to this spot, fish the incoming tide at night then sleep in my car and fish the day time tide as well.
After a horrific windy wet cold night with no sleep I went after them again and it was dogfish after dogfish so I went home.
After Googling , looking up old maps, reading about this fish I received a text from a guy and he suggested to try again on a calm day light breeze just after a spring tide. So I went rig making, bait collecting, going over my reels, rods over and over.. could not sleep with excitement.
After a 4 hour drive I arrived at the spot and it looked so good I couldn’t get down to the water’s edge fast enough. My first two casts were dogfish – “f**K sake feck off dogs” , so I decided on bigger baits – three large sandeels on a size 3/0 hook, 3 hook flapper rig .
On the way up that morning I said food wise I need to be good here so I had a flask of hot water with me for tea so I bought a pot noodle – why? A hot chicken roll would have been better. I poured the hot water in on the noodle and next minute my rod took off like a train – burnt the fingers off myself!
Grabbed the rod struck into the fish I said no dog on this , this fish kept going so after a few minutes I played the fish onto the rock below, and when I went to retrieve the fish he disappeared into the depths gone!
In my mind at that time my fishing gear was going on donedeal!
As I was baiting that up again my other rod took off – “holy s**t” as I struck in, my palpitations were like banging, “if I lose this fish that’s it”. I took my time ,it kept taking line, kept sticking to the bottom, it was a waiting game but eventually it broke the surface and my jaw dropped.
After I took photos and put the fish back alive we said our good byes and off it swam.
I baited up again and cast it out – now I was going to enjoy my pot noodle – looked over and there it was splattered all over the rocks lol! Next time just bring a hot chicken roll.
On the day I had 4 dogs , a coalie, missed two blondes and landed one, I’m going to be buzzing for a long time over that , next ray on my list a cuckoo ray…
Well done Kevin, sounds like a great session and we’re delighted you achieved your objective.
Mission accomplished!
