Courtmac 2003 |
Friday 26th September - Monday 29th September 2003 Waking at 6.30am on Friday morning to the sound of the tanoy on the Swansea to Cork ferry, I heard the words “What time did we go to bed last night?”, “ how much did we have to drink?” and “ That dodgy cheese burger’s making me fart! “. This was the start of a fabulous weekends fishing. Arriving in Courtmacsherry at 8.15 am we were greeted with the usual Courtmac welcome, (nobody to be seen and no key left for the cottage we had rented) so after a quick knock on some doors and a “Shit I thought you were coming tomorrow” we had the key. We unpacked the car, had a well earned cup of tea and set off down to the pier to speak to Mark Gannon about the weekends arrangements regarding boats only to hear “I’m full up lads, sorry”. Seems our pre-booking by e-mail fell on blind eyes, but with the promise of a self drive boat for two days and a telephone call to another skipper, we were booked on charter boat out of Kinsale on Sunday. Back to the cottage for the gear, we then jumped into the self drive boat and off to try some trolling in the estuary. After an hour with no luck the tide was low enough to try our hand at digging sand eel! What a laugh, those little buggers can’t half move, so with Paul digging and Simon and myself on our hands and knees and a lot of shouting “there's one’, “grab it” and ‘don’t let them get away”, absolutely knackered after half hours digging we had sore throats, split sides and a total of about 25 sand eel. The effort was worth it as we were back in the boat drifting live sand eel in about 5’ of water and the Bass loved it. We caught a total of 14 Bass in 45min the biggest being 6lb. Next we headed out of the estuary into the bay to try to catch some mackerel for bait. Mackerel being the easiest fish in the world to catch, we struggled like hell catching only 6 or 7. We then turned to Pollack fishing again. With a little luck Simon managed to catch a sand eel on a shrimp rig and was dancing about the boat the best he could (given its size) as the species comp was under way and he had a sand eel which nobody else had caught and wasn’t likely to catch either. We then headed back to the jetty, tied up the boat, very pleased with our haul of Bass and headed off to sample Courtmac’s hospitality; a few pints of Murphys and fine food. Saturday morning we were up and ready to go spinning for bass before breakfast, so it was off down to the old school house only to find we had missed the tide and all the local fisherman were just leaving. Undeterred by this, we fished for about half hour caught nothing and went back to the cottage for breakfast talking about digging more sand eel and the Bass we would catch later that day. Back out on the self drives we headed to the Outer Barrels (a group of rocks about 4 miles off Courtmac) where the fishing was slow. A few mackerel were caught along with several small Pollack and a few Scad. Then we were off, time again to dig sand eel. On arrival at the sand banks we were greeted by a dozen or so people who had already dug most of the eel. We found the digging harder going than the day before, the eel being both deeper and few and far between. We soon gave up after only gathering 10 or so, back in the boat and on with the drifting but today nothing, the Bass had gone, not a bite, so after a brief discussion we headed of out to horse rock where drifting in deep water with the remains of the sand eel produced some good Pollack to 8 and a half pounds. We then moved off to a mark we had stumbled on last year which produced some good Thornback Rays. We anchored up threw a rubby dubby mix over the side attached to the anchor and set about some serious fishing. With six rods in the water the fishing was frantic, fish were coming up left right and center; Flatties, Pollack, Mackerel, Thornbacks to 11.5lbs, and of course Doggies. Lots and lots of Doggies. Knackered, we headed back to the jetty low on fuel but high on the days fishing. Sunday and we were off to join the ‘Harpy’ our boat for the day owned and skippered by William a Dutchman come Irishman with a sound knowledge of his fishing marks and a good sense of humour. The trip started with a brief stop to catch mackerel for bait, then off to a reef to drift for pollack and anything else that liked dead mackerel and feathers. These drifts produced pollack, pouting, cuckoo and ballan wrasse, cod, poor cod, gray gurnard,ling, coal fish, and whiting. Then off to anchor which produced more good ling and conger to 12.5lb. Again happy with our days fishing it was back to the Murphy’s and some good food in Clonakilty. Monday the weather turned, a short foray onto long strand produced nothing, and during a brief stop in a secluded cove, float fishing over kelp I came up trumps with a garfish. Simon had a good take but lost it, time ran out and it was off to Cork to join the ferry home. The trip yielded a total of 19 species the biggest fish was a 12.5lb conger caught by Simon, I caught the biggest Bass weighing in at 6lb and Paul was content with the fact that he got Simon and myself to travel in his Fiat Multipla, albeit in disguise. All in all a great weekends fishing. Tony. |
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Ready for the off in disguise |
