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Fishing Tackle
Ireland - fishing the deserted Beara peninsular in south west Ireland
23 April 2009
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To stumble upon a coastline of such massive fishing potential, and then to quickly realise that almost nobody actually sport fishes the waters, that is the dream of virtually every fisherman. But surely Europe simply does not have many areas left for adventurous anglers to explore ? Well, I think I have found the place; its not deserted, people do live there, but if you see another angler you will be most surprised…
Ireland is famous worldwide for the quality of its fishing right across the board, indeed there can not be an angler out there who will not find something to interest him or her in Ireland. On the sea fishing front, I am sure many of you have heard of the rightly justifiably famous Dingle and Kerry Peninsulas, jetting out as they do on the south western tip of the country. Miles of stunning coastline washed by fish-rich Atlantic waters, home to many species of fish, but even still, with the numbers of people visiting Ireland, still relatively un-fished. If you are prepared to walk and explore, you will not have crowded fishing in Ireland.
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But take a look at your map of Ireland : there is another peninsula below the famous two, the most southerly one, called the Beara. I know of almost nobody who has even been down there, let alone actually fished these waters, and take it from me, the peninsula is simply one of the world’s most breathtaking areas. Catch it on a sunny day and I guarantee that you will struggle to keep your eyes on the road as you drive the lonely roads, its that stunning. Even when it rains (and it does at times in Ireland !!), you can not fail but be awed by such dramatic green mountains and lush hills plunging into the swirling, inviting looking Atlantic Ocean. Every single mile you drive around this mighty area is different, every piece of coastline just shouts fish at anybody who has any idea about what they are doing.
Julian Shambrook and I spent a couple of days looking around and fishing a very small selection of places on the Beara. We hardly touched the surface of what is on offer, but even so we found excellent shore fishing; with no specific marks to go and fish, we simply opened a map of the area and used our knowledge to try and pick spots that we reckoned would throw up various species of fish. We were blessed with perfect weather and calm seas, but even in a storm you could always find somewhere safe and sheltered to fish. I can’t think of many places I fish that would allow me at least some kind of fishing in any weather, and as such, the Beara seems to be the perfect kind of place for a fishing holiday (plus walking, golf, boating, swimming, and simply relaxing etc.)
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First off we decided to fish using our normal UK bottom fishing techniques, and look for a spot that might produce thornback rays, bull huss (greater spotted dogfish) and dogfish for us. If you have fished the extensive Shannon estuary, you will know that it gives big numbers of the above species, and we reckoned that, from our map, the area around Bantry Bay looked good. We wanted to find an area subjected to strong tidal movements, some way from the open sea, a channel scoured by the tide (look for islands, and we found one); South Beach looked to be a pretty good place to try.
We turned up, parked close to the spot and took our fishing tackle over to where we decided to fish. Beaming sunshine may well not be perfect for huss and ray fishing back home, but the fish love it in Ireland, and the mark seemed to be most promising : not too deep, a bit of broken ground, definite deeper holes to cast into, and a very good bite on my first cast. The fish then snagged me up on an unseen ledge perhaps only twenty metres out !!
As the tide turned and started to flood, so for the next couple of hours we caught a lot of hard-fighting bull huss; hook these fish in relatively shallow water and they will put a good struggle, plus they are easy to return. A few dogfish turned up as well, they always do, but we did not have the time to stay much longer : in Ireland you often catch huss and thornbacks at the same spot, and Julian and I reckoned that nearer high tide we would have seen the ray turn up. But its back on the road, looking for classic rock marks to fish for pollack from. Its a species often overshadowed by bass and cod, but hook a pollack on light gear and you will see why I believe them to be one of our greatest shore quarries.
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We picked a good looking piece of rocky coastline very near to the B&B we were staying, and Julian managed to map-read me down some very small lanes to a parking spot. After climbing over a few fences, what lay before us was about the most perfect looking pollack mark you could hope for : a flooding tide, sheltered from many winds, rocks plunging into clear water, a good tide flow, and again, no evidence of anybody ever having fished there, ever !!
Julian and I were carrying nothing more than light spinning rods, a bum-bag full of spinners, shads and jellyworms, my camera bag (of course !!) and our breathable chest waders. The tide had perhaps three hours more to come in and it all looked about perfect, especially when Julian’s third cast produced an excited yell and a very pollack-like bend to his fishing rod.
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I will not bore you with detailing every fish we proceeded to catch, suffice to say we stumbled upon somewhere pretty special. We caught masses of very hard-fighting pollack using extremely simple methods (spinning any manner of lures close to the bottom, don’t stop retrieving when you feel a bite, be careful when the fish crash dives) and successfully returned every fish as well. I reckon the biggest fish went perhaps just under 8lbs, but what made us really thing was this : considering we had fished just a few places on this huge peninsula, and actually done pretty well, so just how many better places are there to fish, and how many species are there to catch ?
Many areas we saw looked perfect for bass fishing, whether you want to cast flies or lures, or even fish classic surf beaches. Many other rock and beach species are there to be caught, including (I would imagine) wrasse, other ray species, flatfish, sea trout, cod, conger eels, big mullet etc. If anglers were willing to trail small boats down here then I would think the inshore boat fishing would be simply outstanding, and there are plenty of free slipways to launch from. No doubt big common skate and sharks exist as well, in fact the potential is incredible.