Ardglass village with the Mourne mountains peaking over the top!!!!
I was working in the garage all morning so it was planned to have an evening session, in doing so we were also able to fish the flooding tide, this also worked in our favor as it is the most productive time to fish this location. Tony, Mark and Paul arrived around 2/3pm, we rigged the kayaks and headed out. The chosen mark was a reef just outside the bay but on the way out we tried close into the Golf course to see if there was anything about there as it normally throws up small dabs and recently Grey Gurnard (unusual for this location).
It did not take long for all of us to start hitting fish, as expected the Dabs and Gurnard made an appearance in numbers thanks to my personal favorite rig from Shamrock Tackle called (Bleeding Glow Worms). It was my last one and I lost it to a snag on the bottom not long after I had my first few fish so I will need to stock up on them for the coming months. I continued to fish the rest of the day with (Euro Champ Rigs) in gold and white also from Shamrock Tackle and also a deadly rig that rarely fails to produce fish,
The Grey Gurnard are a tricky species to handle as the literally have spikes everywhere............Bud they always seam to be smiling.
Mark and Paul pushed on out to the reef were they started catching Wrasse, Cod and Mackerel by the bucket full while myself and Tony stayed closer to the shore to see what else we could pick up, but Dabs and Gurnard was all to be caught there apart from a lonely Haddock for Tony.
Rough ground fishing at the golf course......
We paddled on out to the reef to the other two to see what was about, Mackerel came in shoals one minute you could not get a bait to the bottom, around 60 feet of water and the next minute they disappeared. Again the usual species where appearing out here, small Poor Cod, Codling in decent sizes and Cuckoo Wrasse, but these are all species iv already caught this year and really had no interest in them. My target was a Ling and hopefully some other new species for the year but the usual suspects kept appearing.
At least the Codling are getting bigger as the year goes on......
No shortage of small Dabs either......
The weather was fair as we went out but gradually deteriorated as the afternoon went on with South Easterly winds making fishing challenging.
As the flooding tide started to reach slack the fishing really kicked off with Marks arms being pulled of him with decent Codling one after the other and a double hook up of a Ling and a Cod.
I was drifting over kelp at the far end of the reef targeting Wrasse to see if I could get a Ballan to add to my species this year but the Cuckoo kept taking the bait until I had a different bite with a cracking fight on light gear, once surfaced if was a Ballan Wrasse so I was pleased catching one out here as there very rare on this reef.
Every one was having a great day with plenty of species and no shortage of fish being caught but I still havnt caught my Ling, I decided to paddle out past the reef to slightly deeper water around 80/90 feet to see what was down there. After about 30 minutes of nothing, not even a bite I paddled back to the outside of the reef and dropped a large Mackerel fillet down to the bottom, as I was drifting alone I had a sharp thump and a very nice bend in the rod, by far my biggest fish of the day. It was a nice ling long over due and my biggest to date...........
The elusive Ling ;)
Things started to turn nasty shortly after this with winds increasing by the minute and a storm approaching from the distance so it was time to call it a day. The other three lads had a great day which was important to me as there is nothing worse than taking people out to blank. Tony even finished the day off with 9 species beating me by 1 on my home turf.
A cool pic of the Jackson Kayak Kraken courtesy of Paul.
Until my next adventure!!!!!
Tight lines.....
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