clare dragoon, carrigaholt, 26-27/4/11

[jw]

People: john, sean, brendan and jw

Duration: 0900-1700

Tide: neap

Weather: fine

Bait: mackerel

Rigs: all

Results: mackerel, pollack, coalie, cod, haddock, whiting, poor cod, pout, red and grey gurnards, cuckoos, ballans and nearly a 6 gill

Report:

there was a bit of swell on day one, we could not get in close to the land, but we could
see the navy a few miles off so we knew it must be fairly calm out there.
Any amount of pollack and coalies, mostly 3-4lbs some up to 6lbs can be caught there

[jw]

some fine ballans a few ounces short of specimen were caught on mackerel close to loop head.
fishing at anchor i hooked what must have been a 6 gill, the fight lasted 70 minutes, ending up
650 meters from the mark before the hook pulled out, id say we had it about 30 meters up
from the bottom. the saltiga 50 was almost spooled of 300 meters of 40lb before we got
the anchor up, these reels have a super drag, strange there are no lugs to attach a harness.

[Donnyboy1]

Savage fishing!! Well done!

[Cormdogg]

Now they're Wrasse! super

[FisherKing]

Hard luck with the shark jw but ye got some fine wrasse & pollock to make up for it

[PMU]

what do you use on the feathers for the wrasse? they are a good size

[jw]

pat all we had was mackerel, i reckon we would have done better with rag or crab.

this area can often be plagued with small pollack and coalie so i tend to use a single
hook near the lead to reduce the chance of a nuisance fish taking the bait

[jw]

how many times does rag outfish mackerel for the ballans, ten to one maybe?
a couple of us went back to this mark yesterday with fresh rag, we caught a shed
load of wrasse, we couldn't get a specimen the best were around 3lbs

[polmac]

brilliant fish there mate, good to see the wrasse back again