Well the guiding season has kicked off now and the first weekend of it has gone well. On Saturday I had Darren Griffin all the way down from Donegal. After 6 years of chasing an elusive Stingray and Undulate ray, he decided it was best to get some guiding to get him on the fish. We met Saturday for the morning and Tide and fished this to about 2.5hrs after low. First cast I ended up with a Painted ray while not long after Darren had a small thornie. Darren is forever cursed with getting thornies. I had some more fish but unfortunately Darren only had the one At mark one.
As the tide started to push and leads were no longer holding bottom we moved to mark two. Weed was pushing here hard but once the tide slowed I had two undulates on the one hook as the male and female were latched to each other. We started to pack things away and just got out of our waders Darrens rod had a nod and managed his first ever undulate ray and a very nice size one at that. I was delighted to get Darren his first undulate after so long chasing them. The pressure was on now to try get a Stingray to make the days fishing an absolute success.
Back to the same location as mark one and it wasn’t long I had a Stingray. This rounded off a Tralee Bay Grand Slam for me. Not long after this Darren’s rod “hooped” over and it could only be one thing taking line from the reel and that had to be a good sized Stinger. After a few initial runs, We landed the fish and at 110.5cm Darren was over the moon. Now the pressure of getting the two targets was off but we only needed a painted to get Darren hist first Grand Slam. Well not long after and again last cast, Darren picked up a painted to round off a great days fishing. Plenty of firsts and PBs.
Moving on to day two, I had a group of lads out from Roscommon who were chasing bass, pollack and wrasse on the lures. With conditions not being Ideal we still decided to give it a go. Bass fishing was non existent but we still went through where to target bass, what features to look for and some basic water craft of how to find features and structure using the waves and where fish would lie when ambushing their prey.
After a quick bit of lunch we then moved to the Wrasse and Pollack. Fishing was slow to begin with a lot of moving to find the fish. After a while Chris has a small pollack on a soft plastic. The swell at this point started to build and made fishing some of the marks difficult with regular splashing. We moved along the coast searching for fish and it wasnt long before all the lads were into the wrasse with Two fish just coming in shy of specimens. All in all everyone had a great day and learned a thing or two.
Tight Lines
-James