Duration: 1 hour
Tide: Low water
Weather: Sunny
Bait: Me
Rigs: None
Results: Blue Shark
Report: [Note: A national newspaper has expressed interest in the pics below, so I may have to take them down later. Apologies in advance if so.]
My ability to catch fish is embarrassingly modest, despite all all the effort I put in. The odd thing, however, is that every so often genuinely weird things seem to happen to me when I go fishing. Well, in the grand history of weird, nothing even comes close to what happened yesterday.
On Saturday, my wife spotted a good deal on an apartment somewhere in the Mizen peninsula. We took a gamble with a the weather and booked it--firstly because West Cork is fantastic at an any time of year; and secondly, because it's too early in the season for Affluent-From-Ballsbridge to wreck it for everyone. So, optimist to the last, I packed off my bass gear with a view to hitting some silver notes.
Naturally, this left the problem of bait. Was never a fan of spinning (my bad), so the best I could do was stick a few peelers into a thermos. I used these on the first night (no takers), which meant I had to go local for night number two. The complex manager put me on to a spot for lug, so off I went at low tide yesterday (Wednesday 22nd) to do some digging.
The digging was middling difficult, but I got enough decent black lug to make it worthwhile. Then, as I was finishing up, I heard a serious but of commotion from the gulls. I turned around, and I kid you not--I nearly fainted at what I saw. There, not ten foot behind my back, was a blue shark cruising in the shallows. He (she?) was about four-and-a-half foot in length. Thankfully I had my phone with me, which has a pretty decent camera. I walked up as close as I could and took a few snaps. At no point did the shark display the slightest fear of me.
This, of course, leaves the question as to why a blue shark should be in such shallow water. Possibly, it was sick, though it seemed fine to me--not that I'm any marine biologist. More likely, I think, is that there was a pod of dolphins in the harbour (I could see them) and that they drove the shark into the shallows to protect their young. This is speculation on my part; I'd be interested in hearing any other ideas.
Still in West Cork at the time of writing ... and I've yet to catch a single fish
Lodore
some picks
