Duration: 7.30 - 12.30pm
Tide: Low at 10.30pm
Weather: Coolish with south-westerly breeze at first, wind dropping and turning northerly later becoming mild
Bait: Razor
Rigs: 2 Hook Flapper, Pennel Pulley
Results: Flounder, Doggie
After changing a lot of nappies in the past few weeks and reading all the reports coming in of bass in East Cork I finally got the escape permit for last night. Stocked up on a nice big bunch of razor (thanks to Oriental Cash & Carry in Cork city!) myself and a buddy headed off to a beach which can be productive as darkness falls.
We had high hopes of our first bass of the year, and on arriving saw a nice enough surf rolling in, with an onshore wind blowing. There was only one other angler around when we arrived, fishing with bait off rocks at one side of the beach. I had made up a couple of pennel pulley rigs with big hooks for the first time so wanted to try these out.
On our first few casts we were getting tugs straight away but not connecting with anything, and assumed it was flounder. The baits were coming back stripped for the most part, I guess the larger hooks were preventing any hook-ups with the flounder. After an hour or so we switched to smaller 2/0 hooks and finally connected with a smallish flounder - blank saved
The wind started to drop after sunset and the surf started to flatten out a bit. After some time we decided to move to a different part of the beach where the surf seemed a bit better. After another 2 hours of small continuous tugs (presumably flatties / coalies) I finally got a decent knock on the rod, picked it up my heart racing with thoughts of a first bass, only to find there wasn't much of a fight and a nice spotted doggie turned up at the end of the line. It took us about 10 minutes to get the doggie swimming back out to sea - each time we put him in the water he kept beaching himself.
I put back on the bigger hooks and an hour after the tide had turned and was starting to push, had another big knock - I picked up the rod and struck, but the bloody line got caught around the rod tip - when I sorted that out and started reeling in I could feel that I had lost the fish, possibly the only bass to hit our baits that evening
We decided to pack it in around 12.30, a bit deflated that the bass didn't play ball for us last night but I think the relative calmness / flatness of the surf wasn't helping - I'll try again in a week or so when the winds pick up again.
No photos taken of flounder / doggie, so just some 'night shots' below instead.
hahaha.a few fish anyway gluck with your next outing 