LINK TO ARCHIVED REPORTS 2005  -  2006  -  2007  -  2008  -   2009

REPORT DATED SEPTEMBER 23rd, 2009

Summer time arrives at last and sea fishing is on a steady platform

Summertime!! At last the majority of days are almost flat calm and fishing is on a steady platform!

Fishing is going well and as the settled spell went on you could see the water get clear and blue again. Mackerel have been getting harder to catch at the Loop and some mornings getting bait has been hard work. However over this last weekend there has been lots of them about again. There has also been a lot of Scad and small Saith just North of Loop Head.

Further off the ground fishing has been showing up lots of different species, with some nice Haddock about. There is also some fine Whiting and we have had 2 Specimen Red Gurnard. The Pollack fishing was still slow with fish proving unpredictable. Part of the day could be very quiet and then whether they just decide to feed or a different drift, you will start to get constant fish. Then just as fast as it started it will stop. However over the last few days the Pollack have been getting very active and 2 days ago we had a day with a moderate westerly breeze when every drop was producing Pollack up to 9lb.

The improved weather has also meant I have been doing more Shark fishing. We have had shark to the boat every day we tried and indeed some fine sized fish with 3 Blue Shark over the 100lb mark.
 

REPORT DATED SEPTEMBER 9th, 2009

Sea fishing expected to improve as settled weather finally  arrives

Fishing down here is ok but we are still being hampered by the weather. Groups in on packages are spending about half of their fishing time in the estuary and the time at sea is often in marginal weather. That we are getting so much time out at sea is often down to hardy fisherman and a good boat!

The fishing in the estuary is going steady with Ray to 10lbs and lots of Doggies making up the bulk of the catch. There are also lots of Whiting to about half a pound around. Mackerel in the estuary are very scarce and a supply of bait from the freezer is a must for this fishing. We have also turned up some marks with quite a few strap Conger and Bullhuss at certain stages of the tide. There is also the odd hit by a Tope, unfortunately mostly on the Ray baits which make for a short fight and then a lost fish.

At sea west of Loop head the fishing is still patchy although we are getting some good action on shads at times. Over the last couple of weeks you can notice that the water over the reefs is brown like river water. Talking to a fellow on the Marine Institute boat today, who were doing some water tests in the lower estuary, I was told that the estuary has 3 times as much fresh water than normal. This I think is bound to be having some effect on the fishing. I have also been curtailed in the amount of Blue Shark fishing I have done and have only done 2 drifts over the last 2 weeks. On one of these we were badly hampered by a heavy swell and this resulted in some time being lost to a tangle. However we did have a specimen Red Gurnard and Whiting while passing the time fishing from the bottom and 2 Blues to the boat. The other trip resulted in 4 blues to the boat.

As I write this report all the signs are that we are in for a good spell of weather and I must say I am looking forward to fishing under blue skies for a change.

REPORT DATED AUGUST 26th, 2009

Good sea fishing has been weather dependent this week

Fishing since my last report has improved but is still very dependent on weather. It is impossible to plan ahead and trips are just a case of taking each day as it comes and seeing which way the wind blows!!

When I can get to the Loop Mackerel are easy to get and of a good size. Also if the drift is at all suitable there is a good selection of fish within 3 miles of the head. If we can get further off shore there is some good sport with shads on the Pollack and we are turning up quite a few double figure fish. However it is only fair to say that with the broken weather it is proving hard to get on this fishing. We have only been able to do one shark drift over the last 2 weeks but there is a good sign of Blue shark about with 4 to the boat on that day. If we do get a spell of suitable weather I would expect this fishing to be good.

In the estuary the fishing is all about Ray and Doggies but we have also had a couple of good sized Tope with the best at 39lb. We also had a nice Blonde Ray which is not common in the estuary.
 

REPORT DATED AUGUST 12th, 2009

The weather and fishing has picked up this week

The Mackerel have moved into the Loop Head area in a big shoal and we can fill the bait box in minutes. Lurking under these shoals are some fine Pollack if you can get your rigs down through the Mackerel.

To the west of the Loop the white fish are also on the move. Although still not back as good as the fishing can be on these grounds, fish are coming steadily to the boat. The Pollack we are getting here are of a good size with fish to 8lbs the norm. They also seem to be very active, giving the angler with matching gear a good fight. Higher in the water quite a few Coalfish are showing.

The Shark fishing is in full swing with Shark to the boat on every drift. The weather did put me off a shark trip earlier in the week though. It can get uncomfortable rolling in a boat and the wave action causes the ruby duby trail to break up. But the scream of the reel with the take of a shark hit is an exciting moment.

Bottom fishing in the deeper water North West of Loop Head is turning up some fine whiting to 3lbs, although not in last years numbers yet. However there are extra Haddock on these grounds.
 

REPORT DATED AUGUST 5th, 2009

Off shore fishing hampered by inclement summer weather

Over the last week the weather has just not let up and indeed on some days has been more like winter. As a result I only got one full day out of the estuary in between gales and all in all the last week as been some of the worst fishing I have experienced.

On the day mid week we did get onto the reefs the fishing was very slow. I suspect that this was due to the mixed up state of the sea. Fishing in the estuary for the rest of the week produced 2 Tope runs with no fish to the boat. The Ray fishing did give up some good sessions but this was again dependent on the stage of the tide and sea state.

The weather did pick up a little over the weekend and we did have some reasonable fishing on white fish just west and north of Loop Head. But what we really need is a good spell of summer weather and at last the weather charts offer some hope of this towards the end of this week and over next weekend.

REPORT DATED JULY 29th, 2009

Sea fishing hampered by poor weather but still good catches

I am into what is going to be a busy time for me between now and the end of September, with a lot of groups coming in for a few days fishing each. I enjoy fishing like this though as you can spend more time doing different types of fishing. That is if the weather cooperates!

Fishing over the last week was hampered by the weather but we did have some good catches. We had a day drifting for Whitefish early in the week, north of Loop Head. After a lot of looking we found some good Pollack fishing on one of the reefs close in. Every drift was seeing fish to the boat of up to 8lbs. The next day was a bit windy but we did manage to get a Tope at the turn of low tide at Beal. As the tide started to full strongly we moved to a mark of Corlis Point, where we quickly had another Tope to the boat. However after this good start we failed to get another run.

A shark drift on Thursday last produced the top catch last week. After what was a long drift and with thoughts of a blank, we got a good run on what was the deepest bait. After a good fight, a fine Blue of 125lbs was boated, photographed and sent on its merry way.

The last few days have again seen me confined to the estuary. Ray marks east of Littor Strand have been slow, but a mark east of Hog Island did produce good Ray Fishing.

REPORT DATED JULY 22nd, 2009

Tope fishing in full swing and first Blue Shark of the season

Can I first of all offer my sympathy to the family and friends of fellow charter skipper Martin Brennan who died last week. I will miss the contact and banter I had with him over the years. May he rest in peace.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing all my fishing with day charters. This has meant that I have spent most of my time fishing on the drift with just the odd short session at anchor. Fishing has also been hampered by the more changeable weather we have had in July.

As to the fishing, first Mackerel have been in plentiful supply and have moved up the estuary so that they are now available above Kilcredaun point. The bait fishing is also turning up plenty of Launce. Around the Loop there are lots of small Pollack and Saith up to about 3lbs, with the odd bigger one to keep you alert! The Wrasse fishing at the Loop can also produce a good session with the fish size averaging about 2lbs.

Further off the fishing has been hard work at times. To the south west on the deep shoals it has been a case of putting in the time! The Pollack have been very hard to catch but there have been periods of some days when they are almost jumping into the boat. I don’t know what is causing this but I suspect that there is so much feed on the ground it is just hard to tempt them to take our baits. I have never seen so much sprat and whitefish fry in the water and any Pollack we do get is stuffed to the gills with small fish. Hopefully this is a good sign for the future. The Pollack fishing is a little more “normal” to the north of Loop Head.

There has been some good Ling to 15lb all over the ground, along with some Haddock and lots of Whiting. Indeed the Whiting are starting to put on some size and we had the first one over 3lb the other day. We have also had a few Hake over the stones north of the Loop and a surprise catch was a fine Megrim taken on a white shad!

In the Estuary the Tope fishing is going well with the best session producing 9 Tope on the turn of high tide. I have not been trying for Ray so I don’t know what’s happening there.

We also did our first full drift for Blue Shark the other day. Although it is still a bit early, the water temp is now up to 15.5’C, which is a good shark temperature. The drift produced one fine Blue of around 80lbs. I will be doing more of this fishing from now on and hopefully the catch rate will go up as we approach August.
 

REPORT DATED JUNE 24th, 2009

Largest fish ever caught on rod and line in the British Isles was landed in the Shannon Region last week

A Six Gill shark was caught by Joe Waldis on the 16th  of June last. Joe was on a fishing trip with two other friends on the charter boat the Clare Dragoon and was fishing about five miles north of Loop Head.

Joe and his group were in the third day of a six day trip, sea fishing in the Shannon / Loop head area. Fishing had been going along as normal and on the morning of the 16th June after feathering up the normal quota of Mackerel for bait, it was decided to anchor up in about 60 meters of water at a mark that was used by the skipper, Luke Aston. This mark was a good all rounder often producing Conger and Skate, with a sprinkling of white fish to keep the crew busy. Indeed very close to this mark another Six Gill Shark was caught and realised in August last year.

The 3 members of the fishing party got their rods rigged up. The skipper rigged up a 80lb Penn rod with a skate trace and baited it up with a couple of Mackerel, let this bait to the bottom and put the road into a rod holder. Every one settled down to do some fishing. After about half an hour the reel on the big rod started to click a bit, not a screaming run but a steady clicking. Joe had his rod in so he lifted the heavy rod out of the rod holder, tightened the line and strikes. There was the immediate pulling of a heavy fish. Joe was strapped into a butt pad and shoulder harness and the fight began! As the fight went on it was presumed that Joe was hooked into a large Skate, although the fish was doing short runs of 6 or 7 meters all the way up which is not typical Skate. But what else could be so heavy, surely the Six Gill of 9 month earlier was just a one off? After 35 minutes of struggle all was revealed. A swirl of a tail left no doubt that this was another monster of a shark. Although catch and release is practiced on the Clare Dragoon, the only way to claim a new record is to have the fish weighed on the land and Joe was very keen to claim what was very obviously a new record.

The fish was brought ashore and when landed it was again obvious that this was a Shark of gigantic proportions. Measuring in at a staggering length of 3.91 metres (almost 13 feet) and with a girth of 2.28 metres, but it was still a surprise when it tipped the scales at 480 kg or 1056lbs! From what we can gather it was 160lbs off a World record.

REPORT DATED JUNE 17th, 2009

Monster Six Gilled Shark caught by Swiss Angler while fishing off the Clare Dragoon wins Catch of Week

Well I don’t know how to write this report!! Fishing had been going along as normal, indeed fishing had been slower than normal with fish showing all over the ground but hard to catch when on Tuesday last the 16th of June every thing else I could have written in this report was reduced to an aside! While fishing on a mark I use for Conger and Skate, a fisherman on my boat hooked into a heavy fish. Using an 80lb class Penn rod with 80lb braid and after 35 minutes of a fight Joe Waldis, from Switzerland, pulled to the surface what proved to be a 1056lb Six Gilled Shark!!!! The fish was 3.91 meters in length (almost 13 feet long). This catch is, to the best of my knowledge (and I wait to be corrected) the heaviest fish ever caught and landed by rod and line in Ireland or the UK. For me catching a second one of these giant sharks inside a year and within 50 yards of each other is amazing.
 

REPORT DATED JUNE 3rd, 2009

Steady fishing on the Clare Dragoon in lovely warm summer weather

The fishing since my last report is best described as steady but with out any great heights! However with this wonderful change to beautiful warm summer weather it has been a pleasure just to be out on the water.

Over the last weekend I had a group in for 2 days fishing. On the first day we went west of the Loop and fished ground up to 12 miles off. This produced a steady catch rate with some fisherman doing better than others! Most of the catch was of Pollack with a few nice Ling and a scattering of other fish. One thing that was noticeable was a period of about an hour when every one was catching. It was as if the fish all decided to start feeding and as quick as it started it was over. This ‘feeding time’ is something I have noticed a lot this year. We ended the day with my first attempt at catching a Tope this year. Although this was a wonderful hour in brilliant sunshine at Beal bar, the session did not produce a run. This did not completely surprise me as the whole season seems late to me, with the water temperature behind other years. This weather should help though and I will be trying out for a Tope when ever I get a chance from now on.

The fishing north of the loop was more varied but quite slow on the drift. Anchoring seemed to help the fishing and we had one nice session on some sandy ground that produced some fine Thornback Ray. Anchoring on the rocky ground, surprisingly also improved the fishing for whitefish. We also had one nice session on the Wrasse with good fishing on rag worm.

As an interesting aside to this report, I had some correspondence from the Central Fisheries Board who run a tagging program that a lot of you will be aware of. Last week I got two letters telling me of a Tope and a Blue shark caught and tagged on my boat last year were re-captured. The Tope had been recaptured west of Portugal and the Shark west of the Cape Verde Islands. This week I got another letter about a Tope tagged by me in 06 that was re caught in early March in the Azores. While the shark did not surprise me, I have heard of them moving a lot before, the distance the Tope had travelled did!

REPORT DATED MAY 21st, 2009

Mackerel slowly starting to show close to land off north of Loop Head

Fishing over the last 10 days has been all day trips, with the weather keeping me on tender hooks and dictating the fishing grounds I am going to. With strong south or south east winds on some days I have been fishing in the shelter of the land on the north side of Loop Head.

Since my last report the Mackerel have been slowly starting to show up and over this last weekend it has proved easier to fill the bait box. The Mackerel are still not freely available but with a little searching catches are good. Most of these shoals are close to the land on the north side of the Loop towards Ross Bay.  There are also good catches of Pollack on this ground and while most of them are in the 3 to 5lb bracket there is the odd fish to 8lb to keep you alert! Also in this area there is a good showing of Launce and with a whole one of them as bait, one of the fisherman on Sunday had a 9lb Ling.

Further out to the North West in deeper water the fishing has also been steady with a mix of Pollack, Saith, Whiting and Haddock. Also there have been a lot of very colourful Cuckoo Wrasse on this ground and on one day two lads had a strike at the same time and pulled in 2 matching male Cuckoo Wrasse that were only 5 to 10 grams under specimen weight!

Out to the south west of the Loop on the big reefs the fishing is still very patchy and while you can find some small arrears of 7 to 9lb Pollack, it does take a bit of looking and this is not helped by the weather. One fish that has not shown its face on my boat yet this year is a Cod. This would be unusual for this time of the year and hopefully will be put right soon.

REPORT DATED MAY 5th, 2009

Good action and steady mixed catches north of Loop Head
 

I had my first fish and stay group in last week. A nice bunch of mostly Dutch lads although some had made the long trip from Romania! The weather worked out ok although it did limit our fishing a bit and the water temperature at 10’C is about 2 degrees less than this time last year.

Mackerel are still proving hard to find and some days it is hard work to find enough for bait. Indeed yesterday (Sunday) on a day trip I could not find any. However frozen Mackerel and squid are good standby bait.

I did 2 days last week on anchor in the estuary due to the weather. One in the upper estuary (East of Carrigaholt) and one day just East of Horse Island. The day in the upper estuary was slow with just a few Ray and Dogfish and a couple of small Place and Dabs. The second day was more eventful with a steady run of Bullhuss to 10lb mixed with a few small Conger. We also had some Pollack and a Ling.

Fishing north from Loop head on the better days was producing a lot more action. On the drift the fishing was very steady with Pollack, Saith, Haddock and Whiting coming steady to the boat. A Wrasse mark produced a fine Ballan Wrasse of over 4 lbs, also on the drift. At anchor we had some good fun with light tackle on mixed whitefish and the bigger baits were producing a few Congers but this did prove slow. However a fine Haddock of over five and a half pounds did take one of the conger baits.

Day tripping west of Loop head is still producing mixed results with catches varying between 70 and 220 kgs of mixed fish.
 

REPORT DATED APRIL 22nd, 2009

Clare Dragoon heads to sea last weekend after a long winter
 

I got back fishing over the last few days after the winter break. Although I had a few enquires for the Easter weekend I had decided not to start back fishing till last weekend. This was partly because (hopefully!) this will be the last weekend I get to spend a full weekend day with my family till late autumn and partly to allow the water to warm up a bit and bring back the spring shoals of Mackerel that announce the start of another fishing season here.

During the time the Clare Dragoon was out of the water, I took the time to do a few maintenance and upkeep jobs on her. This included getting my passenger licence renewed and replacing some of the fishing gear.

Well last Saturday I headed out into some lovely weather and I was great to be back at sea. Stopping first just west of the Loop, we dropped some lines over the side to see if the Mackerel were about. After a short drift we did manage to find a shoal of them and half filled the bait box quite quickly. It was obvious though that the Mackerel were not wide spread and this was born out over the next couple of days, as getting enough Mackerel for bait proved to be hard work. This should improve every day from now on though. If Mackerel were proving hard to get, the same could not be said about the general fishing. Once we moved off into some deeper water we were straight into very steady fishing. Pollack and Saith were coming in 2s and 3s. There were also some Ling, Haddock and Whiting about. However it is noticeable that the majority of the Pollack are still on the small side with most only around 4lb, with just the odd one heading towards the 8lb mark. A session on a Wrasse mark produced some fine Ballan Wrasse to 3 lbs and some Cuckoo Wrasse to almost a pound.
Over the next week I should be out some more and now here’s hoping for a good summer with lots of fish!