The Wild West

Another trip with The Mighty Turdster to the south west of Ireland, the Beara Peninsula, a fantastic place.

Fishing was a bit tougher this year, but we still had plenty of fish. We saw lots of dolphins, a sea otter and were dive bombed by a peregrine which came within touching distance. As always, we enjoyed watching the gannets dive on the sand eel and mackerel shoals. What an incredible sight and sound.

One evening we were heading to a mark known as "Conger Rock". This was in a very remote spot, driving around tiny winding lanes, which were getting smaller and smaller the further we went. The recent rain had ripped away much of the track and as we went down a very steep part I had concerns about getting back up again.

 
We saw a bloke digging something that looked like a grave in the middle of nowhere. Very creepy. Turdy shouted out to him to ask if it was OK to leave the car here. The bloke laughed like a maniac and came bounding across, sticking his scarred head right in the car, blabbering away in an indecipherable accent. Turdy let out a weird noise and was clearly rattled at this character straight out of the film "Deliverance".

We asked him the same question several times but received no understandable answer. We looked down to Conger Rock, which was being hammered by a big Atlantic swell, with spray everywhere and glanced down the ever steepening track.

Turdy turned to me and said " This feels wrong, lets get out of here". We did and I was pretty pleased about it too. It did feel very strange indeed.

One day at a lovely spot called Cod Head, Turdy hooked a really big conger. When he pulled into it he thought he was stuck on the bottom, but after a few seconds there were two huge thumps on the rod as it whooped right over. A few seconds later the rod sprang back and after Turdy wound in we found that the conger had bitten through a 150lb mono trace. Blimey Charlie.

A monster mackerel for Turdy

 The best session was on our last day when we took the cable car over to Dursey Island. That in itself was an interesting experience, high above the Atlantic in 30 mph winds.

 
We found masses of coalfish in the fast water in the sound between the island and mainland. It was steaming through, at maybe six to eight knots and was sixty or seventy feet deep and those fish were hitting our lures every cast.

Turdy into a coalie

They were incredibly hard fighters, especially with assistance of the current and averaged 3-4lb. I had two around 5lb and Turdy lost one in the kelp at least that big. A great day.

We put circle hooks on the metal lures to enable us to fish deep in the kelp without getting hooked up. One of those rare occasions when something worked as well in practice as it did in theory.

Another great trip.