Duration - 7pm - 1:30am
Tide - Rising and Falling
Bait - Lottery crab (smelly and not smelly) and blueys
Results: me 2 smoothies, 1 thornie and 4 dogs, Dave whiting and dog
decided we had to have another blast at getting a smoothound this year so met up with dave at ennereilly and collected my new ian golds international match fx. conditions looked good with the sun starting to make an appearance and the sea relatively calm. sent two baits out as far as possible - both pulleys, one with crab for the smuts and one with bluey in the hope of a ray. slow start with dave picking up a whiting and me a dog in the first few hours. wasn't looking good so far. Round 10pm my bluey rod went mad. couple of mins later my first smoothound of the year was beached - 3lb 13oz beating my previous best by about 3lb 8oz. Nice one
hopes were high and new baits were belted out. another couple of dogs later and by 12am the 'ok, one last cast' conversation was had. 5 mins or so later i noticed a subtle rattle on a crab/bluey cocktail. 'Another bloody doggie' i thought but let out a bit of slack just in case. struck after about a minute and in came a thornback ray beating my pb postage stamp size ray by about 50 times. forgot to weigh him in the excitement.
had one more starry smoothie after that, again on crab/bluey - new pb of 4lb 1oz and was over the moon. dave finished the night off with another dog and we decided to call it quits.
my fish were all caught at range - not sure how far exactly but maybe around the 80-90m mark. the new ian golds fx and my sre were exactly what i needed to get the baits out that bit further than usual. will have to practice the casting a lot more as i'm barely bending the fx so far - lots of potential for distance i'd say, powerful enough to bully a fish if needs be and ultra slim and light. quality.
overall, a quality session and a welcome result after a lot of blanks. pity dave didn't get a smoothie but i was just happy to win a session for once. typical it was the first time we didn't have a bet on it!
We'll have to give it another go there next week and hopefully my run of not quite good luck will have ended by then. 
well done man 