News - 2005
January
Finally got off my backside towards the end of the month and got the new year started with a club competition on Fenit Pier. Plenty of fish were taken today with a nice sprinkling of dab and flounder although catches were predominantly made up of coalfish. I've no details on who won what I'm afraid but, the pegs at the deep end of the viaduct produced the majority of the fish with 9 coalies taken to clench first spot. Best fish of the day was a 46cm coalie. Tralee Bay Sea Angling Club are running a winter league at the moment so it's two competitions in the space of a week for me! On the night of the second competition lots of pin whiting showed but again the competition was won with predominantly coalies. 16 fish took top spot which is good going for a 3 hour competition (25cm is minimum size for round fish in TBSAC competitions). Some of the pegs further down the pier also produced with a number of people returning coalies in the 40cm bracket. Towards the end of the month I decided to chance my arm and headed to a nearby estuary to root out a few sea trout and flounders. You can't beat a bit of optimism! For once "theory" held up in practice and I managed 3 nice trout and 2 good flounders for a few hours effort. Although the sea trout were nothing to write home about I did manage one particularly good flounder on sandeel, check him out on the photos page.
February - April
I've been out of action for a while now and haven't updated the site in ages. Beaches in Brandon Bay seem to be fishing quite well for bass and flounders at the moment. Some club members had good fishing around the start of April at Stradbally with bass in the 4lb bracket. Fermoyle seems to be the hotspot however if you're after some surf fishing but the bass do tend to be small on average here. The Spa is also fishing very well for early season ray also. No monsters and no sign of any painted or anything else yet either but there are small male thornbacks aplenty.
May
Started off the month taking a few days holidays in north Clare and while I was there decided to give a wander out around Black Head. The pollack and wrasse are in, although the pollack especially were very lethargic. I wonder is it just a bit early and a bit cold for them... Plenty of nice bass are starting to turn up on lures too, again fishing slow and deep seems to be working better. I haven't been able to tempt any to poppers as of yet. A sliver of spun mackerel on a bubble float took this little beauty on the right. Fishing along the Spa has been quite poor in comparison to last month. We gave it several sessions during the springs around the middle of the month but apart from a few poxy dogfish and a lone silver eel there was no ray to be found. Amazing considering the fishing I had there only a few weeks previously.
The weather has been acting up pretty badly and has put the tope fishing on hold unfortunately. Despite the wind and rain however we did manage a few sessions and bagged fish to 32lbs. Hopefully the next set of springs at the start of June will give us a chance to up that tally before the fish move off. Here's Rob with a nice typical pack fish around 20lbs. From the boats a club competition here saw a 180lb+ common skate landed by one of the members while the guys from the shore haven't been doing too badly either with an angler landing a 60lb stingray from Fenit pier - two absolute monsters!
June
June started off well for me; an improvement in the weather after the bank holiday weekend didn't do any harm either. Still, now that we had better conditions the few tope left in the bay didn't play ball. Whether they have moved off or not, I dunno. The boats landed quite a few out in the bay on the Sunday of the bank holiday weekend and we managed one from the shore the same day but not a sign of a fish for the rest of the week. That said, all was not lost and we turned our attention to the stingray. Had some nice 30's and 40's. Rob is on the photos page with a 40lb+ fish. Best moment of my week's holidays was on Thursday afternoon... Rob was knee deep in the water when he started waving erratically at me. There in front of him was a huge stinger easily 50-60lbs in not 3 feet of water! Next another similar sized fish cruised up the beach and bumped into the first one. We grabbed our rods as 4 more big fish arrived! But unfortunately we had to stand there and watch them cruise past and around our baits, think these big females had other things on their mind... Big pollack to 8lbs reported from Slea Head already and plenty of mackerel showing at the deeper rock marks. We haven't had a proper wrasse session yet but we've still managed to bag a handful on lures already. The bass fishing has improved but we still haven't had anything big yet. Plenty of fish around 3-4lbs from Cork Harbour and Tralee along with plenty of 4lb+ mullet from one of our marks in Cork. There's been lots of good flounders showing up too here in Kerry with plenty of fish in Barrow Harbour at the start of the month. A club beach competition on Ballyheigue beach returned a huge number of fish with bags of 8 or 9 flounder plus painted rays and bass. The last set of springs also produced good fishing at the Spa again with equal amounts of painted now showing with the thornies. I'd 6 lovely ray in the 6-7lb bracket in 5 casts on th e last Saturday of the month.
July
Well the bass fishing has improved over July. There have been reports of plenty of fish showing, one angler back around Dingle having 4 fish in the 4 - 8lb bracket on surface poppers. Nice session! Shane and myself had similar fishing at Camp with 11 fish on poppers and sliders in the space of an hour one evening. 
The fish on the left here, being the best of that day. The craziest bit of news is reports of lots of gurnards taking over Fenit Pier with a club competition at the start of the month producing a winning bag of 5 gurnards I think. I didn't fish it so details are sketchy. Two other shore competitions at Castlegregory and Inch produced reasonable numbers of flounders however. Ray fishing here in the bay has been sketchy too for most of the month. I only managed to scrape a few thornbacks here and there along with a few more flounders. I did chance a session on the Shannon for tope too but to no avail unfortunately. Again the weather hasn't helped either, where's the bluddy heat wave they were predicting earlier on in the year!? We've managed to keep ourselves occupied with other things including chasing mullet in Cork again. Can't say it has been a great month on the shore fishing front for me but at least we've been scraping out a few fish here and there.
August
Spent more time light tackle fishing in August as the shore scene was a little slow last month... More excellent bassing and good solid mullet fishing too. Seems to be a lot of sandeel and baitfish around which has brought a lot of mackerel into Fenit Pier and a lot of anglers following them. I spent one evening up there and did see a nice double figure thornie taken after dark (the mackerel actually failed to show that evening). There's always a chance of a big stinger in the closing weeks of August/September at the pier so it could be worth an evening or two. Anyway the mackerel aren't the only ones following the baitfish; the bass have joined in as well. A one hour session on a bad tide and new venue did the trick. After we arrived Shane noticed some sandeel breaking, minutes later the entire bay erupted with baitfish, right into our feet and all that was under them was bass after bass after bass, brilliant! All taken on surface lures right up to the rod tip!!!
Some good wrasse coming from marks in Slea Head but still haven't managed a really good pollack. John did take a nice conger just under 20lbs from the marina in Dingle on one of the days "back west". Not to worry the mullet in Cork Harbour have been providing ample sport but the fish have been quite slow and difficult in comparison to other years with thousands of small young fish in the river. Switching to night fishing on the beaches in Kerry has been very worthwhile towards the end of the month, some good painted ray showing in Castlegregory with more bass and rays showing on the beaches north of Fenit.
September
Was off on holidays for the start of September and been at other things this month but still the few times I have been out have been very worthwhile, I think I have missed some good fishing. Snook in one last mullet session before heading away, that's Rob and I with 2 reasonable fish, a nice double both landed at the same time in the one net hey hey. It was the middle of the month and the big equinox spring tides before I was out again. I believe it made conditions along the Spa and other marks in the bay quite difficult with weed and crabs but I did manage to pox a 2 hour session over low water which threw up 6 thornies and 4 dogs plus another nice double below! 
After that it was time to see if the bass were on the move and lost and landed bass in the seven pound bracket later that afternoon on an Allie Magnet. The best of these fish can be seen on the photos page. A change of venue again with 2 hours to dusk produced four more bass for myself and Shane with the best of these on the photos page also. All in all a good days fishing! We spent the following day chasing those bass again with 2 more good fish burying me but we did manage a few more between 2 and 4lbs. The same day threw up a fifty pound stinger for an angler at Fenit Pier on the morning tide and apparently the gurnards are still about too.
October
October started off very well with more excellent plaice from Cork Harbour. Some more good fish too pushing 2lbs but not in the same numbers as we encountered other years. We also tried a few preliminary sessions at the wall in Monkstown for some early cod. Although a few fish were taken the main run hasn't started as of yet (if it will at all) and the fishing has been patchy. Anglers have been taking codling to 2lbs however from here and beaches in East Cork but all we managed the day we fished "De Wall" were pin whiting and pouting gobbling down our delicious and expensive crab baits. Back to Kerry after that to try and get a few more bass on lures. Popping at night with black chug bugs has proved very effective for me this month with the evenings closing in.
But the session that stands out the most was an early morning rising tide at a mark north of Tralee. A nice swell was breaking onto the rocks and the walls of water maybe 3 - 4 ft high were jammed full of bass! I was literally sight casting Zara Spook sliders to the fish in the breaking waves - magic. A few sessions at Castlegregory didn't produce anymore ray just wave after wave of dogfish unfortunately. We also headed to the rocks this month to try for a few late season pollack and wrasse. The pollack didn't show, well nothing spectacular anyways and even the wrasse were a bit hit and miss. The most interesting thing was my buddy Shane who purchased some ridiculous looking Berkley Gulp! Plastic Crabs. I nearly fell off the rocks laughing when he pulled them out of the bag as I prepared another fresh hard back for the wrasse. The smile was on the other side of my face however when he proceeded to out fish me by quite a margin landing pollack to 5lbs on 'em and wrasse to almost the same weight. Unbelievable - had to see it with my own eyes.
Nov-Dec
... the site has fallen by the wayside yet again. It's early 2006 now as I write this so I just want to wrap up a summary for the year. Can't remember all the details for last November and December. What I can tell you is that I've had probably the best cod fishing season ever! November started off well however with bass still falling to lures regularly but as the month pushed on and news of monster cod started to filter in from Cork the plugging started to tail off or I just became focused on trying to catch a decent shore cod - one of the two... Mid November to mid December saw big cod showing at "De Wall" in Monkstown including quite a few double figure fish. I didn't manage to get my hands on any of them myself but the general fishing up until Christmas was excellent with bucket loads of cod in the 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb bracket with the odd bigger fish showing at the wall every so often. That's pretty much how the winter went, codling, codling and more codling.
Even here in Kerry they were around in good numbers with the surf beaches on Brandon Bay throwing up some great catches of codling on night tides before Christmas. There was still quite a few ray around too and I remember one particular session where I had a lovely mixed bag of codling to 3lbs, whiting to well over 1lb and three lovely thornies topping 6'bs+ in the week just before Christmas. Can't ask for more then that! However quite a few trips to Culoo proved fruitless except for lots of over-wintering wrasse which were a nice surprise. Another winter league has started here in the club too however the fishing doesn't seem to be as good. The coalies have not shown in anywhere near the same numbers from Fenit as last year. Maybe it's been the influx of codling this year that has kept the hoards of small fish down - who knows...
