The message came in, “8th of August , sharking with Flemming”. Alan had organised a trip out on the Brazen Huss II for some blues. I had never had a blue so I was more than happy about this. As the 8th started creeping closer I watched the weather closely praying that it would be fishable. Luckily we had the best day of the week and the water was to be flat calm for the most of the day.
We started at 9 am and headed just outside Rossaveal harbour to drop for some bait for the day. It wasn’t long before we had a few strings of mackerel between us that would provide more than enough bait for the day. We motored on past the islands to the sharking areas, where John has had a lot of successful days, to start the drift. We were greeted along the way by multiple pods of common dolphins who provided great entertainment.
Sandy was nice enough to begin flappering mackerel as we set up the rods and got balloons ready to go out. Using 10/0 mustad demon circles with crushed barbs and 10 foot 400lb AFW wire traces we were more than geared up. The chum was lowered into the water and it wasnt long before the first balloon went down. Alan was on and the reel screamed off. The Blue fought extremely well for its size and did some amazing runs as Alan could do nothing except watch line peel from the spool. The shark was landed, unhooked and a quick photo before being released.
We sat waiting patiently until the gulls scattered. Knowing that this meant a shark was around we just had to wait to see whos went. Ian was on. The shark was smaller than Alans but still but up a decent fight. Ian managed to land 3 fish before I had my first and only run of the day. A small blue, probably the smallest of the day but none the less a welcome sight.
On last cast Alan managed to hook into a very decent blue whcich pulled line from the reel and wasn’t at any stage ready to come in. He fought hard for over 10 minutes coming to the boat then tearing off again but it wasn’t Alans day. Just when he thought the fish was tired it managed to throw the hook and swim away just meters from the boat. Unlucky but thats fishing. We finished the day with a total of 8 blues between 3 of us. John was a great skipper for the day and Sandy provided plenty of encouragement and entertainment. When he was awake that is.
You can find Johns details on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BlueSharkAngling/ or online at http://bluesharkangling.ie/
Tight Lines-
