Let's talk about Squid

Squid from Chinese supermarkets are cheaper and superior quality to tackle shops. I would not be without it and wrap my mackerel and sand eel with half a calamari as a more crab resistance bait. Whole squid can be a killer bait for Huss and conger on the Shannon Estuary. Smaller sand eel with a strip of squid is an excellent distance bait. I never defrost my baits until I am going to use them. I leave squid out on the trip to the mark so I can pull them apart. Bait defrosts quickly in the summer and slowly in the winter. That maybe obvious but dealing with a frozen block of squid in January is no fun😏

The clean ground mark that wasn't, 16th June 2014 Gs mark

I was fishing a clean ground mark on a spring high tide on the ebb. This is a place that has given me double figure ray at distance with a long flowing trace with squid and sand eel.

Doing my best to cast at distance with zero coordination my first two casts were pulled by the ripping ebb tide into a snag that they were not retrieved from. I switched to casting well up river  and I caught this wee fella on a two hook golds

On a second rod I was scratching for dabs with some old peeler, squid and sand eel. I'd normally prefer old blacks tipped with mack but my bait supply is down. On past sessions I've been so busy with flats I've missed ray bites with the distance rod. Tonight I may as well been scratching my arse as I hadn't a tap and spent the night feeding the crabs.

My last two casts were crack offs due to my poor casting. I had forgotten shock leader and had ran out of reels so went home. Still 3 hours fishing in pleasant weather with a ray caught, even if he was small, isn't to bad.

A session in the sunshine, fav mark 9th June 2015

So I went for my first session of the year after work. I was fishing for 3 hours of the early flood on my fav mark and I had a dog on my first cast followed by this wee fella.

All I have bait wise left in the freezer is sand eel and squid so I fished these squid wraps.

This bait combo gave another dog and a ray at distance. Sometimes the smallest rays give the hardest fights and this fella was stuck to the bottom all the way in.

It then went quiet, to the extent that the usually voracious craps weren't even touching the bait. With work in the morning and an hour drive home I could only hold out until sunset missing twilight which is the hottest time for Ray .

At sunset I lobbed as big a bait as possible 20 yards out as I know they come close in here especially at this time of the day and this fella nearly pulled my rod over.