South Wicklow Beach 21-AUGUST
Smoothound Fishing has been slow enough for me this year, though i'm not complaining

, i'm happy enough to even land one

. Last year and the year before , it wasnt uncommon for us to be getting 2 or 3 decent fish each when they were about. This year it seems to be single fish patrolling the beaches. On this occassion I had only set up and got the smoothie on the 1st cast. I didnt know that it was to be my only fish and the next 4 hours would be fruitless

. Ah well, at least I got one decent one

It was on live peeler, well he was alive seconds before he hit the water

. Fishface caught a couple of small fish during the next few hours, then did his usual trick of landing a decent Smoothound on his last cast

. Disappointing to see the remains of fires/chairs/tents etc littering the beach

. And its our fellow anglers
GREYSTONES 23RD AUGUST
Went for an afternoon session in my beloved Greystones (maybe I lived there in a previous life

). It was my first fishing trip in my fishing van

. I dropped into
Gotcha Angling to get some bait and have a chat with Ringo. Very handy for future trips there. Shop is well stocked and prices are reasonable , best of luck to him

. I'll be purchasing one of his Smocks next time

. Armed with my 20 rag, I headed around the corner to the rocks and set up. "You won't catch anything here", an English gent advised me. "Theres been 2 anglers here for the last 4 hrs without a bite". With these nuggets of information delivered to me he left

. I wasnt going to let all that negativity affect me so I cast out 2 rods, 1 out and 1 in close. Over the next couple of hours I had 8 species, Ballan Wrasse, Corkwing Wrasse, Shore Rockling, Codling, Blenny, Short Spined Sea Scorpion, Coalies, and Pollock

. Weather was nice, dry and sunny but cool. The English gent reappeared with his grandaughter and a rod, but he didnt catch anything, pity

. She told me he had caught 70 mackeral the night before, and I was a bit dubious until another old gent ,who turned out to be one of the original anglers who hadnt gotten a bite and who also gave me a few rag

), told me that he also had a lot of macks the previous night. I got nothing but large clumps of weed at distance

. I enjoyed my afternoon/evening session there and scarpered before the rats came out to play

. On the negative side the place was a tip, I brought a bag of rubbish away with me and as someone has suggested here i'll bring a litterpicker with me next time, as i'm sure the rats have been through the rubbish before I got there

.
NORTH WEXFORD BEACH 27TH AUGUST
With Al and Jordan and their mate Mark down on a smoothie hunt, myself and Fishface decided to tag along to see if some of Jordans good luck would rub off on us

. Dawsey was down with a few mates too, but he made the fateful decision to stay in Ennereilly

. I arrived at about 6pm and Jordan had already caught a decent Smut

. The tide was dropping at this stage and I was using fresh peeler for the smoothies and rag/squid on a 2 hook flapper for anything else that might be around

. I set up beside him and then Fishface arrived . I was lucky enough to connect with a smoothie and after a nervous few minutes eventually landed him with Neils help, soaking his sleeves in the process

. Fishface wasnt too happy with me getting a Smoothie, and started throwing stones at me. I ignored his childish behaviour and started to have a conversation with the more mature Jordan (age approx 11

). Then I felt a sharp pain and thought the stars had come out early but Jordan explained that I had been hit on the head by a stone (Boulder

) thrown by Neil. Poor Jordan witnessed all this , and Al bringing him away from Belfast to the peaceful South, I was mortified

. Jordan bandaged me up to give Fishface a scare, and he was for once very humble and apologetic, and rightly so

He had bad Karma for the rest of the night, but unfortunately pulled in a doggie just before he left

. Al will fill in the details on what was caught , but everyone got the target species. I had one decent Smut, one small one, a Dab and a doggie. I also met Creep from the site as I was leaving, unfortunately we didnt get much time to talk, but i'm sure we'll meet up again at some stage.

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! --