He is at it again, any wonder he is knackered when he comes into work. Federation member Drew Mcminn tell a wee fable of a day in Donegal on Sunday.
A Bay to remember
Breath easy, let the salt fill your lungs, of course I can do this on Millisle beach, but it just isn’t the same, Donegal sea air is certainly more enticing, and this morning before 6am we set off, full of anticipation, dying to feel the Donegal magic for the first time in 7 agonising months.
We followed the same roads, had the same beautifully traditional breakfast stop and awesome insomnia coffee as we always do, then drove on into the wilderness, playing a game of spot the massey ferguson.
We arrived on one of our favourite wrasse marks, the swell as lively as imagined the turquoise blue of the rocks shining through the crystal clear atlantic water. On with the lures... cast... nothing.... cast... again... nothing... nothing.... half pounder for the man with no face... nothing... I went for a try at the pollack and had a couple of 2 pounders, then checked my phone, 3 missed calls from the MWNF... “They’re on, fish a chuck”, gathered my gear and arrived to find him wellied into a beautiful kelp piglet, and so began our redemption, our reward for patience, our moment in the unrelenting sun which with no exaggeration saw 50 to 60 beautiful bold Ballans hit the shore, maxing out at around 3.5lb this is what we had craved like a drug since the latter stages of last year. The swell was pounding the venue, more than once we got face fulls of glorious invigorating atlantic spray, but we were home, doing what we love, and testing out some new tackle and tactics along the way. First try with the larger 4” TRD proved fruitful as fish after fish fell to the big black buoyant beauty, each cast resulting in either a hook up or the TRD coming back looking like its namesake! The Majorcraft N-One Seabass 862 was given its first proper test alongside the Triplecross Hard Rock 802, and though not as brutish, throwing a Storm shad gave it the feel, and it had more than enough backbone to cope with the hardcore head shakes of the wrasse, on a related note the storm 360GT Coastal shad is a wrasse fishing weapon and should be treated as such. The wrasse were still boiling, which left us with a choice, stay and face the inevitable slowing of the bite, or move to a new Pollack spot we had been scouting on google maps? We opted for the adventure and packed up the wrasse gear.
Arriving at the new venue we skirted the fields looking through polarising glasses to see likely features, we found an area deep, so deep in fact that we had to count 40g metals down for about 40 seconds to touch bottom, it felt relatively clean, and soon we were hitting the odd good fish to around 4.5/5lb, MWNF was destroyed by a monster on the surface, while I lost my beast at distance, though it wouldn’t be a Donegal trip without something calling us back for more.
In one last defiant act, the sky lit up as the thunderstorms that were predicted loomed ominously in the background and with that it was time for home, a natural fireworks display the backdrop to the end of our epic day.
I love lure fishing, so I do.
Lure Fishing F###ing rocks!
