Donegal Bay, night and day, 9th, 10th March 2014

[johnwest]

People:Me

Duration:9th, 3.5 hrs up to high water. 10th 6.5 hrs to almost high water.

Tide:mostly flooding

Weather:Fine, excellent on 10th.

Bait: Frozen lug and fresh mackerel.

Rigs:2 hook flappers, 1 up 1 down and single flapper.

Results: Coalfish and flounder.




Report: Sunday 10th; Arrived at my chosen mark on Sunday night to fish the flood up to high tide, there wasn't much wind but a bit of swell running. Two rods, close and distance, were set up and after 20 mins a few bites started on the close in rod. These turned out to be coalfish in the 20-24cm range. They weren't exactly ravenous as on previous occasions, perhaps they are starting to thin out a bit. The distance rod was returning all baits unmolested until the last cast produced a small 18cm flounder, not enough to coax me to stay another while so with a dozen small coalfish and a flounder I called it a night.
Monday 11th; I decided to try a beach today and arrived to find a gentle surf coming in. The weather was excellent, first bare-arm session of 2014. The fish seemed to have gone away for the day as no bites were recorded, only an abundance of rubbish including several lengths of polythene wrapping, a coalbag and an arm's length plastic gauntlet which suggested the A.I. man had been down for a session! A substantial amount of weed was also collected so after a few hours I headed off to another beach. This one was clean but also devoid of fish so after another couple of hours I headed off to find a filling station before closing time(long walk home). I decided to return to yesterday's mark to try and save a total blank and managed to do so with a coalfish first cast. I persisted with a distant rod and was eventually rewarded with a half decent 32cm flounder which took a large chunk of mackerel intended for a dogfish. I have to say that this mark has been a bit disappointing this winter in terms of species, normally I would expect the 3 rockling species to show along with pouting, whiting and poorcod but this year it's just coalfish and occasional flounder. Ah well, every year is different.

[chuckaroo]

nice flounder to end up with JW, hopefully made it all worth it
a 6lb bass is bound to grab one of those baits one of these days....
i hope to have a chuck on a north coast beach tomorrow, will maybe put a report up
this weather is too good to miss-out!

[Deleted User 3488]

Nice few fish, well done.

[lad123]

Nice flounders

[Al and Jordan]

at least you are getting a few fish man
i'm finding the pickings to be a bit slim myself on our last few beach sessions.
but sure it can only get better as the weeks go by

[lucky13]

Nice aul session lad...