Duration:17.00 - 19.00 Sheeplands and 20.00 - 23.00 Ardglass pier
Tide:High at 17.25
Weather:Fair, clear with NNW breeze
Bait:Rag
Rigs:Sheeplands float, Ardglass 3 hook flapper1/0
Results:Sheeplands Ballan Wrasse 30cm, Ardglass blank
Report:Being from Strangford I have always meant to fish Sheeplands but have tended to stay on my native shores. Well having some rag left and heading for Kildare I decided to give it a rattle. Advice......do not drive a car into the lane at the gate/stile for Sheeplands....I well scratched the paint work on what looks like an innocent Hebe bush and found it difficult to reverse out due to tightness of lane and a pot hole
Since Sheeplands looked like rough ground I decided to float fish the rag but after two hours and one small ballan wrasse, with none of the expected pollock, I headed for Ardglass a couple of miles away.At the end of Ardglass pier were two grand lads who fed me warm tea and snacks as the evening chilled down
They had been there for a couple of hours but had nothing but had come down because they had a lot of small plaice a couple of weeks ago. I fished for three hours and had only a couple of small flattie bites. The others had a sea scorpion. The grey seals are fearless cruising and wallowing in front of us, they would probably have removed anything we caught.A Hong Kong chinese man arrived who knows the area really well and had lost hundreds of fish to the seals over the years. He arrived with about eight large buckets many containing fish heads, drop nets, two 8 foot handled prawn nets each with a small trident on other end for crabs and lobsters and two heavy duty rods with large homemade floats. An average night would produce 6 or 7kg of prawns then come dawn he switches to float fishing for pollock and he was hoping for at least 30 large pollock by Sunday late afternoon. His best pollock to date was 11lb. According to him Ardglass fishes best in a calm sea associated with N or NNW winds, his favourite spots are the seaward of the pier wall and on the eastern point of the shore on the northern side of Ardglass bay. While his catches seem excessive this man has fished like this since a boy and it is part of his existence. He is worth meeting as he is great observer and has a wealth of knowledge, including bass having lived in Brighton. He has seen two schoolie bass caught in Ardglass in recent years.
By 23.00 it was time to pack up, hit the road for Maynooth and plan the next sortie.
2012: Bass, Whiting, Five bearded rockling, flounder, dab
I forgot to mention the large fish heads in the buckets were either pollock or coalfish possibly from a previous trip?? He gave a good tip for keeping a prawn on a hook ......put prawn on hook followed by a small piece of soft plastic or stiff polythene. He gave us a couple of handy rag locations. If you ever see him engage him.