November Report

In the event I managed to get out fishing six times in November between the exam work and some decidedly unpleasant weather. It was more than I'd expected but the results were very mixed.

On the 2nd I visited Rosscarbery. It was very calm and mullet could be seen topping all over the estuary pool. Jason and Michael were already fishing from the wall and catching on popped-up maddies ... I just had bread of course! I headed a little further down the west side where there seemed to be a good concentration of fish and missed one decent bite before the swans found my groundbait and made fishing next to impossible for the next hour. In the end I gave up on that swim. The other two had moved over by the bridge by now. That would have been my next choice too with the slightly deeper water, so instead I headed over to fish the lagoon.

The afternoon passed by with very little activity other than a brief flurry of knocks that yielded a couple of palm-sized giltheads. I packed up a bit early and went to find Jason and Michael. They were fishing down the west side now ... no recent action since the tide came up but they'd had a good day with four mullet each.

I feel like I've dug enough maddies for one lifetime and can't really be bothered with the time, effort and mess of digging them any more.

Applying a bit of lateral thinking, I rocked up at Ross again on the 4th armed with little red worms from the compost bin in our garden. I figured if the mullet wanted red and wriggly they wouldn't be too fussy about what species of red and wriggly ... but how wrong can you be?

There seemed to be plenty of mullet about again. The worms looked the business and didn't seem to suffer unduly from immersion in the brackish water ... but I didn't get a credible bite on the rod fishing them all day. I'll give them another shot sometime, maybe the mullet just weren't in the mood today. I didn't get much action on my other rod either legering crust bait ... a few indecisive taps and one drop-back bite mid-afternoon that produced a decent 3:10 thicklip.

On the 17th I headed up to Kerry. There was a touch of east wind blowing on the tail of Storm Claudia but during the afternoon it calmed right off.

I had plenty of bites on the flood tide but nearly all dogfish. Between them all a couple of small thornbacks barely 2lbs found my baits and a single huss that would have struggled to make 5lbs. I had high hopes for better results on the early ebb tide but the fishing just petered out. A disappointing session all told, made more so when I discovered good numbers of spurs had been caught elsewhere in the bay that day.

If that session was disappointing, my return visit on the 21st was a disaster.

I fished a new mark which was a long and fairly difficult hike. Conditions weren't the greatest - it was cold, as evidenced by snow on the hills across the bay, the wind was a fresh north-easterly. There was a ton of rain forecast to arrive about dusk so I planned to fish till mid-afternoon to get back to the car ahead of that.

First cast I was into a good fish, a big huss that opened its jaws and let go of my bait right at the edge. Next cast - a little huss so small that I had to look at it long and hard to check it wasn't a doggie.

And that was pretty much that. I had a few tiny knocks that came to nothing, lost four rigs in snags and at 12.30pm the first big spots of rain were landing about four hours early. By 1.00pm it was pouring and I'd had enough.

On the 24th I headed out onto the Mizen for the first time this winter mullet season for just a short afternoon session.

The pool was flat calm. The number of fish present was still well below the winter peak but I could see mullet topping, amongst them what looked like some very big fish judging by the tails I spotted occasionally scything through the water.

I set up with light waggler float tackle and fed a small amount of mashed bread every trot through. As is often the case at this venue, it took the thick end of an hour before the mullet turned on to the feed.

I missed a bite at the tail end of the trot and next cast, a fish was onto the flake bait almost as soon as it settled. The float dithered a bit then submerged and I struck into what felt a very solid fish. Some twelve minutes later I was sliding the net under a superbly conditioned thicklip of 5lbs exactly.

All the commotion had spooked the rest of the fish across to the far side of the pool, and it took another hour of patient feeding before I was getting bites again. I missed a few then latched into a 3:04 which gave almost as good a scrap as its bigger shoal-mate. The light was failing now and it was getting cold, but I was happy with what I'd had.

I was up in Kerry again on the 29th, arriving a couple of hours before high water.

The fishing started off slowly, with just a single dogfish and a record-small thornback ray on what was left of the flood.

Right on the top of tide I had good pull-down on a mackerel/squid cocktail ... it was a heavy fish that barely did anything till it surfaced under my rod tip when it shook its head violently and my bait flew out. Another good huss sank out of sight and made its escape.

Today, however, the fishing picked up on the ebb tide. First off, a smallish male spur and I think I missed another one from the same shoal on my other rod while I was bringing it in. Then a bit bigger ray. Then what I thought was going to be a decent huss but it turned out to be one about 3lbs with a dogfish somehow trussed up in the trace as well.

While I was sorting that mess out my other rod pulled over firmly. A good huss had taken the whole squid bait and this time it hung on, a fish about 9lbs. I don't think it was as big as the escapee this morning but it was some sort of redemption I suppose.