Duration: all night
Tide: flooding
Weather: fair
Bait: sandeels, mackeral, crab
Rigs: pulleys 3/0
Results: doggies, coalies, spotted ray.
Report:
i dont normaly post reports (shear laziness). i have intended to do so this year as it not fair me lurking and reading and not contributing.
hadnt much planned for the weekend except i new i wanted a decent fish somewhere - deep water rock marks i thought would produce me something at this time of year.
saturday tea time i'd had enough of sitting around waiting on folk to decide what drunk up way the wanted to spent sat!!
bugger this i thought so i went home in a hurry and started to pack fishing gear, still not knowing any destination i rang my fishing buddy to see if he fancied the trip to nowhere, he said yes!
frantically packed the car, waited on shane to appear and when he did we promtly hit the road for inishowen - we talked a few marks over on the journey and we decided to go for a out of the way rock mark in inishowen with some deep water infront of it.
landed at our intended mark, got set up quickly as we knew we'd missed the first hour of the flooding tide which meant we'd probably missed the first rush of our target species (thornback ray) but it looked good for afew fish so we cast out our baited traces, looked a each other and breathed a sigh of relief that after an decent drive we'd finaly got fishing!!
shane was first into a doggie, a fat pregnant one at that, shane was into a second before he'd baited up hi first rod again.
we went tit for tat at the doggies every other cast with him and i comparing size (oh errrrr mister!!! ) some big fat females and some fiesty little males.
it was feeding time for me so banged out fresh traces and went about getting the stove out for some steak sandwhichs mmmmmmmmmm tasty they where too, upon fishing my food and getting a cuppa tea i noticed a "ray" bite
i'd cast out a 6oz lead otg cast on a tourny rod, it went miles out so i decided i let this bite develop a bit as we had missed a few ray bites earlier so i def wanted this one!!
i watched as nmy rod tip pulled over as the fish went downtide - time to lift into this bigger i thought - it didnt move!!!! ah ha i thought this is my ray (didnt divulge this to shane) and calmly went about my business pump and winding this thing to the surface. "another dog" shouted shane - "aye" i replied (knowing full well it wasnt).
i looked over the edge to see a nice white bottom side to a ray, got it lifted up the rocks to see the beautiful creature that it was..... "spotted ray" i shouted and a reply was given "f**k off, no way"
"seriously" i replied!!!!
there he was sitting looking quite bemused and what had just happend to him, well hooked in corner of the mouth (thanks fedstar for the cirlce hooks), duely unhooked and a few photos followed and i held him down at the waters edged for a min until he rippled the wings and of he swam into the depths!!!!
my first spotted ray, few pounds in weight, i was one happy anlger that night.
a few more doggies appeared and so did a few 2lb coalies to livin shane up a bit - but nothing beats a ray when your out ray fishing!!!!!!!
regards
dave
a very big welldone. Thats a great report and a fantastic looking fish . Keep the reports comming .
well done.
