December Report

December has been a really frustrating and disappointing month for my fishing. There's been some really vile weather and the better-weather days have mostly coincided with work commitments and airport runs for Sylvi's pre-Christmas trip to UK. Then to cap the month off, I've been smitten by a very unpleasant virus that Sylvi brought back with her.

Most of my mental energy has been directed at events 500 miles away where our long-term tenants have moved out of our house in Hampshire. Changing the utilities and council tax back into our names has sapped up more potential fishing time, as has making appointments with estate agents, solicitors etc for a trip over in January when we hope to tidy the house up a little then get it on the market.

Anyway, enough of all that.

On the 2nd I headed down onto the Mizen for what would only be a very brief morning session before the new tide started pushing into the estuary pool which usually signals an end to mullet sport for a few hours.

There didn't seem to be the numbers of mullet present that had been there on my November trip, but there were certainly a good few.

After thirty minues feeding with mashed bread I started getting dips on the float and after missing a few I latched into a 3:02 mullet. As I returned the fish I noticed the flow had just reversed, but I had time for another smaller thicklip of 2:05 before the water was pouring through too fast to fish sensibly. These two fish raised my months-with-mullet total to 57 months consecutive since covid travel restrictions were eased in April 2021.

The 12th was my only whole day fishing of the month, on the rocks up in Kerry. It was a miserable grey day with outbreaks of rain from time to time.

There have been some spectacular catches in the area this autumn but I missed out, again. I had plenty of bites right through but only landed dogfish and I don't think any of the bites I missed were anything other than doggies.

At least the LSDs kept Fern interested, she has a good bark at them then sits guard to make sure they don't swim back ashore when returned like they sometimes do on shallow beaches ... but less so with 50 feet of water just in front!

The 20th was my third and, as it turned out, final outing of the month, an afternoon session out on the Mizen.

The photo is a bit misleading as it was mostly another grey day with a surpringly chilly southerly breeze putting a little chop on the water. It only fined off for a few minutes heading into dusk.

I didn't see any surface mullet activity at all when I arrived and the wind was awkward, so I set the float to fish the bait just off the bottom close in. Bites were few and far between but decisive when they came and I hooked into 3:10 and 4.03 thicklips that both put up prolonged, dogged fights ... especially so the smaller fish that seriously had me thinking 5lb+ till it finally popped up on the surface.

Later on when it calmed off I started seeing odd whelms around the pool and caught another, smaller, mullet of 3:05 trotting the bait through shallower.

January is going to be another thin month fishing-wise as we're spending the first three weeks over in England sorting the house out. Fingers crossed for the weather in the last week of January, especially to keep my monthly mullet run going as I close in on five years.

A very Happy New Year to all my blog readers.