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St Catherine's Breakwater 7th Aug 2000
GR: 720,529
We decided to give the breakwater a go, especially as a number of smoothounds had been caught in recent weeks, although their numbers were dropping off with the end of the season... and we could still opt to do some general ground or float fishing for bass, black bream, dogfish, pollack, etc....
We'd be fishing the tide up, with high water due around 1pm, and conditions should be pleasant with the forecast for clear skies and a light NW wind....
First however we needed some additional bait to the frozen squid we already had .. so we went to the slipway at Gouray, where Chris and Karen proceeded to dig a bucket full of lug ... I had to dash back to Chris's place, having left my camera behind .... rather a weak excuse to get out of digging... LOL
Drove up to St Catherine's, walked along the breakwater to just over 3/4 of it's length, and set-up to fish the inside wall..... started fishing around 7pm, along with around 10 other anglers along it's length.
At approximately 7.30pm, one of the Scottish lads fishing down from up managed to pull-up a black bream, which was too small to keep so he put it back..... I also saw a small wrasse taken at the end of the pier, otherwise things seemed to be very quiet indeed!!!!!
8.00pm..... I was watching a chap doing a South African backcast on the end of the breakwater, when suddenly an inflatable raft, much like a zodiac came speeding around the end and very, very close to the breakwater.... I commented to Karen about how lucky they were not to have been hit!!!! ... then the silly sod of a driver kept going towards shore, no more than about 30yards away from the wall ..... managed just to miss our lines, but the Scots were not so lucky.... pulled one rod into the drink, and snarled the other 2... instead of stopping and pulling up the rod it was now towing, and freeing the others, the skipper slowed, then stopped (all the while being shouted at by people on the breakwater which he obviously heard)... and then moved off again .... thankfully the other two lines had become entangled around the rod in the water..... I went over and gave them a hand, and after a while we managed to recover both the rod and reel..... but it was enough for them, and so they packed-up and left, and very kindly gave us their remaining bait of squid and sandeels...
9.05pm ..... Chris managed to pull up a small baby smoothound of about 12" caught on a lug and squid combo.... took a pic, but it was out of focus, didn't really want to stress the fish so got it back into the water a.s.a.p.
9.15pm .... managed to catch a fish... 6"pout on lug!!!!! Not really what I had in mind and the photo was again out of focus!!!!!.
The evening continued ... with the odd missed bite, bait abuse by crabs, and the sound of the odd large fish hitting the surface and making a splash.... all very frustrating.... this coupled by large amounts of floating weed..... fun fun fun......
12.00 midnight ... Karen pulls up a small spidercrab .. too small to eat.....
1.20am... went and had a chat to a chap fishing on the end for bass, and casting into the slack water to the left of the main tidal run.... by the time we'd left .. his total was one dogfish and a couple of pouts...
1.30am.... managed another pouting.... this time 9" .. uuumm
2.15am... Chris had started fishing the backwall, and caught himself a dogfish..... and put it back before I could take a pic.....
By 3pm, we'd had enough and decided to call it a night.......