Puca, Shannon estuary 10th June

[bigkev]

Bigkev and Dave B:

9 hours:

High water 2pm:

Scorchio:

Mackerel:

Hokkais and flappers:

Mackerel, pollack , tope:

Setting out from kilrush we were greeted with a solitary working gull, right in the middle of the estuary ,so dropped feathers. This resulted in a dozen mackerel, the furthest up the estuary so far
This allowed us to anchor uptide of Beal bar and settle back for some tope action
Two biteless hours later, and with the tide starting to slacken, I decided to try baited feathers to see if therewere any whiting about
The rod immediately hooped over and an obviously huge fish then took all 300 yards of my braid down to the mono backing
30 dripping sweaty minutes later, and with a scorched thumb from trying to slow the fish down,I landed a 30lb tope by the tail
I do not recommend this method for catching tope by the way!

The tope then decided to play ball, and we landed four tope to approx 35lbs and dropped another couple of runs
Lovely fishing in beautiful sunshine

Later in the afternoon, with the tide forcing us off the bar, we tried scratching around the various cliffs for pollack, but only managed a few small fish

Happy and content, made our way back to Kilrush locks, where we were forced to queue with a large number of boats also enjoying the weather

Happy days

Kev:

[MAC]

Nice report Kev.

Some great tope fishing there... Well done. What the biggest you've got off the shannon so far this year?

Kev

[bigkev]

Hi Kev

Biggest tope so far this year is 35lbs. But to be honest , we only catch males and they dont get too much bigger

We had a couple of fish last year between 42-45lbs, but they are the exception,rather than the norm

The average is 25-30lbs, but they all pull!!

Kev