I did get out on the Friday night just as I had planned. Digging Thursday had been hard as the tide was too small to open up the good parts of any of my local beaches and the brief period that any sand was open happened during that twilight period when middle-aged eyes strain to see the few worms I had managed to turn. Luckily two of my children were competing to see who could pick the most worms from the ever-increasing mounds of sand.
By some lapse of memory and judgement Fanore was my chosen location. Conditions were looking perfect, but looks as so often are deceptive. Surfers were enjoying the rip from the small river whose mouth I had hoped to fish. There appears to be very little in the way of a food chain at Fanore and flocks of gulls pick through what ever washes from the mountains at this point. The river is full of small sea-trout, many of whom must end their days in the cavernous mouths of bass hunting the rips. Within half an hour of setting up further towards the rocks the last of the surfers slid from the sea in the dwindling light and I moved positions closer to the centre of the beach.
Lug , squid and sandeel were the baits for the evening presented on pennel pulley rigs and running leads. And so I set my snares…and waited…and waited…changed baits…… changed areas fished and waited. The sun got bored and slid off for the night and in its place wind and rain vied for their place to torment me. when the tide turned it brought with it those small surging waves that may pose very little danger but can run fifty yards up the beach and wash an unsuspecting tackle box away.
Although I wear a headlamp I like to fish in the dark and watch small snap-lights using the light only for re-baiting and the likes but the tide had left scour holes on its earlier retreat and a small stumble in one of these dips was enough to put enough pressure on my ankle for me to realise I really wasn’t enjoying the evening.
I have been criticised in the past for mentioning marks by their names but anyone who lives within fishing distance of Fanore already knows of its existence and to be honest if you read my last years reports of the time I put in to Fanore and the amount of fish I took off it I would be surprised if even people who lived within walking distance of it spent much time there. It either fishes or it doesn’t. I believe that the bass are feeding on sandeel and when the sandeel aren’t there neither are the bass.
Five days later and struggling with seasonally affected enthusiasm disorder it took a call from Joe to get me out on the beach again. I get this lull at this time every year when I know that a good session could mean a handful of dogfish, a few flounder or a bass or two.
But there was a chance of a bend in the rod and more importantly for me to try Joe’s new lure set-up.
Predictably he was late. When I plan to go out with my wife I always tell her we need to be somewhere an hour before the actual time and that way we are usually only half an hour late. That never works with Joe, like the mackerel he arrives when he arrives. By the time we arrived at the mark it was already an hour into the fill. Joe tackled up his new Grauvell lure rod and selected a ‘Maria chase’ before striking almost instant disaster when the lure and leader parted company from the shiny new braid on his reel. Fish-less, the now inanimate piece of plastic sailed slowly towards the open sea in a cloud of language which was so profound I had to go home and look some of the words up.
When I should have been setting I my own rods and getting a bait in the water I instead rummage through Joes lure box to see if I could find anything new and came across more plastic from the Maria stable
When I did get set I opted again for a pennel pulley baited with sandeel and a running paternoster rig baited with a joey mackerel mounted on a 6/0 varivas big mouth hook.
It wasnt too long before a nod on the rod and a few springbacks showed that something had picked up the joey. Not much weight and no kicking but it turned out to be a small huss, which was encouraging because where there are small huss there could be big huss. But there weren’t. There were more dogfish but that is all that showed. As the tide filled we were pushed further up the beach and the bites dried up. While it is always nice to get a bend in the rod hauling dogfish wasn’t the flame I needed to re-ignite my passion that keeps me out in wind and rain. I will dig Tuesday and head out West for some easy on the leg fishing from the promenade at Lehinch later in the week.
I took Joe’s new rod for a wander along the shoreline and found it to be a lovely rod to cast, light as a feather and easy to make the lures twitch and dance. It would have been even nicer if I was able to draw a bass to it!
