Duration: 5pm-1am
Tide: low to high
Weather: flat calm at start, ending windy and wet
Bait: lug, rag, mack, sand eel and squid
Rigs: 1 up 1 down and 3 hook flappers
Results: 4 pollack, 3 shore rockling, 3 coalies, 2 poor cod, 2 pouting, 1 whiting and 1 codling
Report: i dug some rag and lug on saturday so i would have some bait at the ready as soon as this windy weather cleared off. and true to form monday was looking good for a wee short run at donaghadee. i got set up around 5pm and started landing the fish as soon as the light faded. the first 2 hours were pretty busy with rockling, pollack, poor cod and coalies all coming on the feed. the first rockling was a scarlet colour
a new one for me 
and the first poor cod was a good size at 20cm, just 2cm short of my p.b. i saw another angler walking along the pier at 7ish and i thought, great someone to chat with as i fished, and as he got closer i realized it was immunecfg. 
i met him on saturday when i was digging bait too, great minds think alike 
. his first fish was a nice poor cod a bit bigger than my one, quickly followed with pouting and coalies. around 9pm the surface of the water came alive with wee bait fish splashing every where . this was a good sign as they were being forced to the surface by something big and predatory my wee rod got a good knock and i landed my biggest whiting this year at 24cm. i know.., i know, you can all stop laughing now 
, but compared to the pin whiting this year he was big 
. not to be out done immunecfg got a bigger one in the 30cm bracket with a tail sticking outta his mouth 
he tugged on the tail and out popped a poor cod who was about a third the size of the whiting 
. i've always known that whiting are ferocious feeders, but the poor cod was the same size as the shads i would normally target big pollack with. so if he was feeding on one that size i might need to scale up my shad size for the summer pollacking season he then landed a couple of wee codling and i got one too along with a couple of pouting. i was baiting up my rod when i heard him say 'what the hell is that!'. i turned to see him pointing at the surface of the water. about 2 foot below the surface a large deep bellied fish of about 3lb was circleing and all the wee bait fish went crazy jumping out of the water i a bid to escape luckily my float rod was set up behind me and as quick as i could, i baited it with a sand eel and cast it in that area . we could'nt see the fish anymore and i never got a nibble on the float, but it certinly got the adrenelin going the funny cioncidence was that the fishing now went dead. and we both came to the conclusion that whatever the big chap was he'd scared the bejeasus outta the rest of the fishies and they'd all cleared off 
. around midnight immunecfg packed for home and i braved it out another hour without a single bite. so i admitted defeat and headed on as it was now raining. even as i sit here this afternoon writing this i'm still drooling thinking about the big chap and what he might have been and will he be there when we return 
fair play Al your chalking up the species fairly lively ..........
