Julian and I had our first session together, this season, yesterday.
I'd come back from a trip to Kerry to find Julian was
able to get out and had been finding a few fish. Before Easter is a busy time for him getting his raku ceramic orders into galleries in the UK and Ireland before the galleries start getting busy.
Until then he'd been out once and blanked, I wasn't fairing much better with my only decent fish being a 4.5lber.
That all changed this week , yesterday we caught 19 bass in a three hour session! I managed 3 between 5-6lb with a mixture of 4's, 3's and a couple of schoolies bringing my total in the session to 9 fish. The best fish squirmed out of my hands and dropped back into the water as we were about to take the photo , I nearly grabbed it but only ended up with wet sleaves to show for my efforts. Here's one that wasn't camera shy.
Julian took 10 fish with similar sizes to mine . He has really made up for lost time this week, yesterday was his third day out in a row and he has managed 26 bass to 7lb in the three short sessions, that is quality angling! Especially given the smallest neap tides , easterly winds and a sea with the clarity of tap water....
Highlight of the evening though was the pair of us finding his glasses covered by over a foot of water on the incoming tide.
In all the excitement he'd left them on a rock while unhooking a fish. After a long time looking with head torches over rough terrain we'd pretty much given up hope and knew the tide had covered them , an expensive downer on proceedings.
Then he saw a glint off the lense under the water and happiness was restored.
Hard plastics outperformed the softs on this occasion . All the gear we took with us was a couple of spare lures in the pocket box, a pair of forceps each and the camera, kit bags weren't an option.
The forceps make unhooking a lot less stressful and dangerous for you and the fish , and I'm glad to say all the bass went back strongly to fight another day.
