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.

Fav Mark, Co. Limerick 2-sep-2014

People: Me

Duration: 6:20pm until 9:20pm

Tide:early neap flood
17:27 1.6m 23:59 4.0m

Weather: Mild calm night

Bait: Sand eel, Mackerel and Squid

Rigs: Pulleys 2/0 to 4/0 penels

Results: 2 thornback ray and 3 dogs

Report: I had no fish for the first hour but had small bites ripping at my bait. This can be small round fish or pup tope on this mark but after a while mackerel broke the water.

After an hour I finally got a dog with a longer cast to mack/sand eel followed through the next hour by 2 missed bites and another dog. Finally my rod tip gave a tap followed by a big pull and I had this fish.


All quiet after that as it went into darkness. I don't have a decent light at the moment so  I didn't see any bites in the darkness after 9pm but on my last cast I reeled in another dog and a better ray to mack/squid which bent my AA big beach diving into the rough on the way in.

Fav mark, Limerick, 01-sep-2013

People: Me

Duration: 10:20 until 14:20

Tide: LW flodding

Weather:Westerly breeze. Cloudy

Bait: Sand eel and Squid wraps

Rigs: Pulleys

Results: 1 thornback ray and 10 dogs

Report: On arrival I opened my cool bag to pick out the first bait to defrost and noticed my frozen mackerel was missing. After searching my car and ringing home there was still no sign. Never mind a smell will arise from somewhere over the next few weeks and I'm down to refrozen mackerel that I don't trust in my freezer anyway.

By the time I was ready to cast out the wind started up and was causing a small bit of a wave that made me worry about the chances of catching ray if it were to picked. Never fear this mark always produces and my first cast went slack line. I could barely move what was on and after a back breaking tug of war I landed this ray from 30 yards out.

On my second rod I had a double shot of dogs. After that, I had dogs through the session but as it went on I had to cast further out to get them and were ripping the bait off the hooks without getting hooked up with two fish coming in tail hooked. Half way through the session I had another though fight with a ray that went to ground on the way in. Though I did get it to move again it locked up and was eventually lost.

Fav Mark, Co. Limerick, 25-Aug-2013

People: Me as I've no one to fish with anymore

Duration: 10:20 until 15:00

Tide: Spring Ebb

Weather: Mild and cloudy

Bait: refrozen mackerel, Sand eel and Squid

Rigs: Pulley 4/0 & 2/0

Results: 11 dogfish, 2 ray and a Huss

Report:

You know you haven't been fishing in a while when you open the cool box to see dead flies that have gone through the full life cycle from maggot to caster to fly. 

I got here just before the post high water tide run the lasts around an hour before the water runs upstream again. On the second cast I had a dogfish. Which was followed as the tide started to run by a wacking great bite with the fish running off down the ebb flow. I had a stop start fight of a Huss diving into rocks and I was delighted to see a large tail waving out of the shallow water as I brought him gently in as he had his teeth around the penel sand eel squid.

 This was followed by more doggies and this small ray. Earlier in the tide I lost two doggies and rigs on the way in to the rough round. These were recovered later on in the tide as it ebbed and released but not counted in my results.

 I continued to get doggies slowly through the session with no missed bites until lunch time when things went quiet. As every angler knows the best way to get bites is to get out a sandwich. On doing this I couldn't get keep a bait on the hook for doggies but couldn't hook them. I brought the bait closer in, in the hope of avoiding the bit robbing dogs and getting a decent ray but just started hooking up  the dogs again but I did get this double shot.

After work fishing, Fav mark, Co. Limerick, 8th-october-2012

So after missing out on fishing over the weekend I went through my well worn procedure for after work fishing. My rods packed in with my tripod in it's rod carrier and my reels, leads and rigs in the shakey box so they could be quickly lifted into the car in the morning as I headed to work. That morning the bait of frozen Mackerel, Squid and sand eel placed in a cool bag with ice packs along with frozen juice bottles filled with frozen water that so the bait would be defrosted as needed at the mark.

Preparations the night before went well but I was awoken to rain and gale force wind that morning but on checking the forecast the weather was to improve so I continued. On arriving at the mark there was a light NE wind but this gave a wave and tidal rip well past the winds strength. The tidal rip was which may to wave or it may have been due to the Shannon outputing fresh water into the estuary and effecting the tides.

First three casts each gave a dog which I left to long for the bites to develop as they had took the hooks well down, as often times here quick strikes result in missed fish,  but I managed to take the hooks out. After that it went quiet as after low water the tide went dead as the whatever was pushing the water down nulified the neap flood tide rip.

As it went dark my LED head torch showed it's inadequacey as I couldn't see the reflective tape on my rod tips. My expensive Tiga head lamp is still out of action but I have just ordered bulbs off of Ebay. I had debated going for a decent LED head lamp that doesn't have a battery the size and weight of a small child attached to your hip but I hate letting something that should be still functional go to waste.

I managed to see a snatched bite in the darkness on a running ledger that was probably a strap. I felt no weight on the retreive so left the bait out for 5 minutes but the fish did not come back for it. When the trace was reeled back in the bait had been pulled up the snood. I'm guessing the fish may have grabed the bait and the hook was caught on a snag. I had what looked like a shoal of whiting rip apart another bait and tie the 4/0 hook in a knot and a final doggy before 9pm that chin hook itself.


People: Me

Duration: 6.30pm until 9.30pm

Tide: 17:47 1.90m 00:19 3.60m

Weather: NE breeze with a slight surf. Mild.

Bait: Mack, Eel, squid

Rigs: Pulleys penels 2/0 on one rod and 4/0 on the other

Results:
4 dogs

Report: