Our first soft plastic session afloat this year:
Barry Pat and I loaded the gear into the ‘Wahoo’ and set off out into the morning darkness at 6am.
The cool North Easterly made its presence felt, the t-shirts would be kept undercover today!
As we steamed to our first mark the sun popped its head up to add a bit of light.
Choosing what soft plastic to use for the first mark was interesting, so many different colours and actions to choose from ! …14g round jighead/3/0 with an Ayu Xlayer….right thats settled !, we all attacked the first mark in the same fashion, drifting at 1.6knots in 30 feet of water, tempreture showing 6.5 degrees below the keel it was game on 🙂
The first hour passed and no takers on the start of the falling tide, bit of excitment ensued when Barry got a hit from a small coalie but he seemed to be flying solo.
A change of plan was in order and we made the decision to travel to another mark while the tide was with us.
On mark 2, a few test drops resulted in Pollock in the 1lb bracket, very timid takes showed the fish were not actively feed, merely hitting the softies out of aggressive instinct, all were verylightly hooked.
The last hour of the fall created a nice rip in the water where the depth rose from 80ft to 30ft, the sea was pushed up and ‘wahoo’ was put into the mix. We sussed out the fish were sitting on the bottom edge of the reef waiting for the food to come to them….. and we had a menu full of tricks to offer them 🙂
We started the drift uptide of the turbulant water, flicked our softies (22g jig heads were required now) towards the reef let them sink with the undertow pay the line out andgently impart some slight movements..wait for it..wait…… then … BANG >>>BANG >>>>BANG ..Triple Hook Up
The action was frantic for the next hour fish being hooked, lost, busting up swivels, straighting hooks….a couple of decent fish were lost due to hooks given under the load of some of the runs… getting a few pictures taken was difficult, the ‘spare man’ spent most of the time on the landing net and or releasing fish. A good mixture of fish was taken; Pollock, Codling, Coal Fish to good size.
As the tide slackened over low water the fishing switched off, so we moved around over general ground picking up more ‘Tommy Cods’ and the odd Pollock and Coalie, I was ‘given out’ 🙂 that we hadnt picked up a wrasse over= the previous reef.. 2 drops later my Red Gill got smashed by this beauty:
Boy was I happy …hahahah, lovely colours on the fish. As we moved around Barry picked up some lovely codling on a green shad, hanging deep until the last minute. My memory card on the camera was full so I missed the pictures of the bigger fish later on, I get them off Barry he took a few on his camera. Patrick hauled plenty of fish during the day after it was touch and go in the morning whether a Blank would haunt him ! ….he even flicked out the odd lure on the quiet in case the Billys were about 😀
A couple of funny moments:
I got hit by a Coalie while I was talking to Pat…thought my jigga was near the bottom…so I struck …haha..the fish flew out of the water on the port side about 20 feet in the air and landing on the starboad side unhooked !!!! crazy…we cracked up laughing !
A gannet hit the water like a missle!!! about 3 feet from the boat after I flicked in my white giant Xlayer…I had to take advasive action.
Our rods are not going to be happy with us when we hook big Coalies in Norway ! 😆
General Ground 🙂 🙂 😆
We called it quits around 5pm and headed for port.
Heres a few other Pictures from the day:
Overall it was a fantastic day to be out, even though the fishing was patchy we easily had over 150 fish, Pollock to 6lb, Colling to 3lb Coal Fish to 3lb and a fat wrasse 🙂 and all on light lure gear…looking good for the rest of the year based on these results.
Danny.
Wexford Angling Blog 
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