MARY FRANCIS VALENTIA HARBOUR , 27th -29th july

[THE ROD]

People:ten including myself

Duration:three days

Tide:high tides afternoons , quite strong , too rough to anchor though

Weather:mixture of rain and glorious sunshine over the three days

Bait:mackarel , squid

Rigs: hokkai , flowing traces with french booms

Results:day 1 started slowly enough and the mackeral were conspicuous by their abscence . however we were able to tempt the pollack with the hokkai's , graham who was new to the charter boat angling had a lovely pollack on his first drop weighing in at a respectable 8.5 lb . thats him hooked ( sorry about that awful pun ) on our charter boat fishing for the future i'm sure . The pollack were plentiful and suckers for the jelly worms , we must have taken 20+ on the first day , we also had a couple of nice ling and about ten nice size pouting of 1-3 lb .

Report:day two started with the pollack again and we took in two nice cod of about 4-5 lb , the heaviest on day two was a nice pollack of 9.5 lb , again it was mixed species of ling , a lone herring , few mackeral , pouting , red and grey gurnard. Our first two days on the water were quite uncomfortable due to the westerly wind of between 4-6 . and we all have the bruises to prove it , not easy when your're trying to bait up or make up a trace while trying to keep your balance . However on day three our excellent skipper nealie lyne , who knows his stuff i can tell you , brought us to a sheltered location not far from shore to do some fishing for flatties and we were not long there when the first of four nice thornbacks were landed ( two male and two female we're told ) and one blond ray also . All in all a very enjoyable three day charter which was down in no small part to our skipper with whom we also stayed and were made very welcome by his lovely wife mary . We will definitely be back in the future . Highly recommended . If i knew how to upload photos i would post them but i just dont know how its done but if you want to see photos they can be seen on nealie lynes facebook page under fishing photos 2012 .