Articles

A new deep-water venue
A new deep-water venue   With all this heavy rainfall, I was forced to postpone my planned River Pike sessions for the time being, and turn my attentions to the sea.   Again, weather conditions have not been kind, and, checking my diary, I was amazed to see that strong coastal winds and huge tides have kept me away from my usual haunts for several months now.   However, with two days of light winds over a neap tide, almost un-heard of these days, we had a rare opportunity to...

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Specimen Roach and their Hybrids
Specimen Roach and their Hybrids (Archive article for Irish Angler, 2010)   With the Predator Tour on Lough Derg taking up most of my angling time last month, chasing specimen fish and playing with new products were temporarily placed on the back-burner.       During this period, I had been asked to have a look at the Mitchell “Big Mouth”, a no-nonsense, distance casting spinning reel from the Pure Fishing stable. Teamed up with the new Shakespeare Supertea...

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Specimen Flounder
Specimen Flounder Featuring the Abu Atlantic and Penn Mag (Archive article, originally for Irish Angler Magazine) Regular readers will have noticed that my articles this year are based around various new tackle items on the market. My intentions are to hand-pick top quality gear each month, and give it a thorough test in pursuit of whatever species or task it is designed to target.   For this month’s article, I wished to hit some shore marks in search of large Flounder, and the ...

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Collecting Sand eels
Collecting Sand eels Over the last few years, whenever possible, I have made the 360 mile journey from Kircubbin to Kerry in search of new adventures. I usually stay with Kevin and Christine Brain in their bed and breakfast facilities, overlooking Lough Currane, famous for Salmon and in particular, the exceptional Sea Trout angling available.       From this home-base in Waterville, I am able to explore the wealth of coves, beaches and rock marks, and to be honest, two life-...

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Carp and cough medicine
Carp and cough medicine When Ross Macklin gave me a call offering a couple of days work surveying feeder streams in Galway, I jumped at the chance. With his “state of the art” electro-fisher, he looked like one of the guys out of Ghost Busters! It was an interesting two days.       With this “away from home” opportunity, I took the liberty of packing the carp gear, and with work completed, took the three hour drive from Galway to Cork City and met up ...

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Interesting Day
Interesting Day   It has been a couple of years since I fished with my old mate “Big Joe”, and finally managed to talk him into joining us on this recent adventure.           Launching from a North Antrim Harbour, we decided to try a drift along a co-ordinate given to me earlier by top charter skipper Sean McKay, Ballycastle. He had been finding some specimen Spurdogs on this mark, and it would be a welcome change to actually drift for this speci...

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Spurred on with another boat adventure
Spur’red on with another boat adventure On this adventure, I was lucky enough to have a couple of items of tackle to play with. Shakespeare had kindly sent over two of the new Ugly Stik Kayak rods to have a look at, and Shamrock Tackle had generously donated a selection of boat rigs to try out.     With neap tides currently running, the deep inshore waters of the Antrim Coast beckoned, and all we needed was a drop in wind speed to get us off the starting blocks! There were s...

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In search of a specimen Cuckoo Wrasse
In search of a specimen Cuckoo Wrasse First, the bad news In my short life-time, I have searched for most fish species in Ireland, in salt-water and fresh.       As a specimen hunter, I have been lucky enough to find many over the hallowed specimen weight, a specimen being regarded as a fish of a life-time for a particular species. However, as the species boxes are ticked, it becomes more and more difficult to find new species to realistically target over specimen weight. I...

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A boat trip at last
  A boat trip at last Managed to find a day on the North Coast where the wind actually subsided a little, just enough to pop out on the Fast Fisher and see what’s about.   It’s crazy, but when I looked back through the calendar, I couldn’t believe it had been almost a full year since I last had my boat out on the water!     And last year only comprised of three trips! Between angling opportunities and temperamental weather conditions, I have almost fo...

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A Mullet Grand Slam in West Cork
A Mullet “Grand Slam” in West Cork For a challenging Mullet “grand slam” I had the notion to target all three Grey Mullet varieties during one adventure. However, to push the boundaries a little further, how about adding that they would all have to be over specimen size!       The three species in question (omitting the Red Mullet found offshore) are obviously the “thick-lipped”, the “thin-lipped” and the smaller and much prett...

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