Duration: day 1- 4:30-9:30/ day 2- 12:30-3:30
Tide: variable
Weather: both days were nice, with a gentle north easterly.
Bait: all sorts
Rigs: mainly clip downs and flappers
Results: codling, scorpian fish, flounder, dabs, whiting, thornabck ray, dogfish, poor cod, pout, shore rockling and 5 bearded rockling
Report:
day 1- senior comp
after my last abismal display at the sai comp in ennereilly last month i was determained to do my best, so a focused eric was what arklow was going to get, then again focused and eric are a bit of an oxymoron. anyway i drew peg 16 which wasnt any sort of disaster, the beach is fair, but peg 1 was in casting distance of the harbour wall which i suspected might hold a few counting rockling and coalies which could be vital in a sea of mini's. at half 4, a slightly later start than anticipated due to a dublin bay club comp beforehand we all set our sights for gold and lobbed our baits out into the sea. after a few minutes a strong rattle on my tip signaled the interest of a wanting fish and sure enough a few minutes later a lovely 22cm coalie came through the surf, a fish was great but a counter was even better.
after a few hours it was appearent that mini's were there in abundance and it wasnt long before i filled my 10 undersize fish limit. i did manage however to sneak a 21cm dab in before i did so going into darkness so i was in a strong position for a good finish. as night fell rumours of 4lb thornbacks and tony leading the way with 14 counters did their rounds around the beach, they were to prove unjustified thank god. i waded my way through the vast fields of undersize fish picking off the odd counting codling at range but it wasnt enough. i decided to play a bold tactic and fish no more than 30 yards out, i was soon duely rewarded with a counting double including my biggest fish of the night a 26cm codling.
with an hour to go a few of us were in the running with roger, myself, tony, alby and john all in the mix, the fish unfortunatley appeared to dry up, being even bolder this time i went after my favourite fish the flounder and tossed a flapper no more than 3-4 yards out, it paid off with a perfect little 20cm specimen and i got my counting fish total to ten.
at lines up it would appear that a thornback was indeed taken by new member 'canning', it wasnt 4lbs but it did measure 29cm and it was a pleasant febuary surprise i ever i saw one. the real downer of the night was when we got back to the cars to find alby's, pat's and roger's windows smashed by some mindless ejits. so if your heading to arklow at night be carefull
final results are as follows
1st--cretekos-352pts
2nd- eric-----309pts
3rd-roger-----303pts
4th-tony------285pts
rest of revised results are available from http://www.ercsac.com
longest flat- thornback ray 29cm--canning
longest round- codling 26cm- cretekos/harr.w/eric
day 2
back to arklow again today for the junior comp and the 1st leg of their league. similar conditions to yesterday, from the beginning fish were coming in from all distances mostly whiting but with the odd coalie and rockling thrown in. it was great to see the kids get a few fish especially at this time of year in daylight. croppyboy's young man got a couple of colourful scorpian fish which got the interest going. it was to prove close in the end with no blanks, the but the winner of last years league came out on top by a narrow mairgin
1st leisha kavangh
2nd aleish ivory
3rd pierce kavangh
4th evan ivory
above all i'd like to thank our sponcer 'viking tackle' in bray for their continued sponcership
Big well done to Dimitri on the win and to Brendan on the Ray. It was sick what happened to the lads cars. I just hope karma has something cruel in mind.
Thanks for the great time everyone, and a big well done to all the prize winners, looking forward for my side of town the next one 
It was a good day and we were blessed with decent weather 
