what else is down there ?

[blowin]

Talking about the Sligo Bay area , mackerel are hard to find and even more difficult to catch. You can often feel your lures bumping off fish and a relatively high number come up foul hooked . This suggests that they are swimming in tight shoals because they are being harried. More so than usual so what is doing it ?
Over the past couple of years I have seen basking shark , an estimated 25 ft whale , the dorsal of a (?) white fin tuna , a pair of sunfish + several singles , have caught a 3 lb trigger fish and lost a sizeable cuttlefish/squid. All within a mile of the shore and in addition to the usual dolphins , porpoise and tope.
Large jelly fish have started to appear and decent pollack have all but gone , not that there is necessarily any connection.

My point is that things are noticeably changing so what new opportunities might there be down there ? Has anyone caught an exotic species which is thought to be uncommon but may be worth targeting ? Perhaps they haven't yet been caught in numbers because no-one has really tried .

ATB

[hugo]

This suggests that they are swimming in tight shoals because they are being harried. More so than usual so what is doing it ?

Seals. Dolphins. They're everywhere around the bay this year.

The bumping you talk about is most likely shoals of launce, their mouths are too small to engulf a normal hook but they'll go for anything that moves, I've had a good few foul hooked this year on mack and pollock rigs. The foul hooked macks were probably attacking the launce.

[kieranring]

Its launce, I had the same problem and put on small sabiki feathers and got full strings of them , great bait.

[hugo]

I use small shrimp rigs for them, pink or luminous green. They also tempt pollock and mack big time.

[blowin]

Thanks for the feedback. It hadn't occurred to me that I might be bumping off Launce. I'll drop some smaller lures down next time.
Any idea why there would be a relatively high proportion of foul-hooked macks tho' ? Perhaps coincidence.

As to exotics , I heard that John Dory are occasionally taken off the Sligo coast. Is that true ?

ATB