People:me, Mitch
Duration:9pm-1am
Tide:rising
Weather:south easterly breeze, showery
Bait:crab, rag, squid
Rigs:pulley rigs and 2 hook flapper
Results:Bass, flounder, doggie, smoothound pup, tope pup
Report: Bought a new rod from C+J Angling on the Long Mile road in Drimnagh and Joe from the shop advised me to try it out on a playing field and see if it suits, if not he'd change it. Fair enough , says I

, sounds like a good idea, but then I started looking at tides and weather forecasts etc and began to get itchy feet

.By 7pm I had my mind made up and packed the car up and headed off to Wicklow. The sun was shining as I left , but it started to pelt down near Wicklow town. . Thankfully it had stopped as I arrived at the beach and there was a good surf up. I spotted Mitch and made my way down ,, he had landed a nice 53 cm Bass

.
I got set up and put some baits out but as there was a strong run of tide and a fair bit of weed , I decided to just fish one rod till the weed eased up as the tide rose. I got talking to 2 other anglers, Anthony and Senor Feeshy from the site,. Anthony had just landed a 51cm Bass, after an abscence of two years from Angling, and was justifiably over the moon!. The pressure was on me now

. As the tide rose I went back to 2 rods, and put a 2 hook flapper baited with rag tipped with squid, out with the Sonik sk3. I sat back down , holding this rod in my hand, as its nice and light, and left the Triplex, with crab bait attached, on the tripod. As Mitch came over for a chat , I thought i could feel the line lift in my fingers, but as there was still a fair bit of weed around, i wasnt sure if it was a fish or not,,,,,,,,,,,until the line went slack

. I got up and reeled in until I caught up with the fish, and immediately realised i was into a good fish. I brought him in with the waves, and he gave a good account of himself

. Then the weed at the leader knot got caught in the top eye so I walked backwards up the beach until the fish was beached. A fine Bass , first of the year

, 55cms and just over 4 lbs on the scales. I was delighted

. I even decided to look happy in the photo for a change

. A nice way to christen my new rod
No more slagging from Fishface

,well at least about not catching Bass, he would have to think of something else to slag me over

. I sent him a pic on the phone so he wouldnt feel left out

On the crab , i had a pup tope (not 20lbs either

), a pup smoothound, and a doggie. And I almost forgot, there was a flounder on the 2 hook flapper with the bass

. Well , in fact I did forget about him in all the excitement, but he went back ok in the end

.
The Fisheries Inspectors were on patrol, we were delighted to see them doing their work, and in a nice polite and friendly way they went about their business of making sure we werent hauling in and keeping lots of schoolies. I headed off around 1am, happy as Larry

Species '20 (14) 5 Beard Rockling, Shore Rockling, Codling, Whiting, Pollock, Coalfish, Pouting, Corkwing Wrasse ,Ballan Wrasse, Poor Cod, Dab ,Smoothhound,Flounder, Thornback Ray
For the rich, there is therapy. For the rest of us, there is FISHING! --