CLICK ON THE DATES FOR PREVIOUS WEEKS NEWS IN THIS MONTH

MAY 6th     MAY 13th    MAY 20th     MAY 28th

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Update: May 28th, 2004

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"Happiness is......... Bray at 5.00 on a Sunday morning, waiting to go fishing"

Tope fishing in Cahore, Co. Wexford: What a beautiful start to what turned out to be a beautiful day. Just as the sun was coming up last Sunday, myself and Stephen Guest were hitching up my boat to take 56 miles down the road to Cahore, the home on the east coast of the "Animal" fish.

Along the way we were to pick up my brother Stephen in Arklow not that far from Cahore itself. Here's devotion for ya, his wife even got out of bed at 5.30 in the morning to make us all rasher and sausage rolls, Nice.

We were launched and on our way to the "two-buoys" by 7.00am, the sea was near flat, the sun was just starting to heat up the air, we couldn't have asked for better. By 7.20 Stephen had the first run in the boat, his heart nearly leapt out of his shirt with excitement, but as we've all experienced more often than not, the fish dropped the bait much to Stephen's disappointment. He didn't have to wait too long, within 10 minutes he was off again, this time the fish felt like he was never going to stop. Stephen grabbed the rod and felt the real power of a Tope. As the fish started his second run he bent the rod back to strike, he was on. Next followed a good 15 minute battle between man and fish with a rippin tide thrown in for good measure.

By the time the fish was ready to be boated, both man and beast were ready to quit. Stephen was now shaking as the adrenaline took over, the fishes instincts to trash about took over too. All hell broke loose on my little boat. I'm on top of the cabin trying to take the best picture possible while two burly clowns are fighting this 5 foot monster to prevent it from hurting itself while they take the hook out. Thankfully, both fish and men survived the ordeal, and another one of those rare moments are added to Stephen's memory that are all too scarce the older you get. There's only one thing that comes close to catching your first tope, and that's seeing someone else catch their first !

The day itself produced five fish, two fell to both Stephen's and one to myself, mine was by far the smallest, although I did manage to catch it on a fresh "Dab", the biggest of the others was about 40lb. By 4.00pm we were on our way back to the harbour, and by 7.00pm we had the boat washed and tucked away back in the pen in Bray as we headed off home wrecked but happy.

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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STRANDED AND HAPPY 

This is only a small note, but one to mention anyway, I can't believe we're not hearing more about this during this time of general and local elections. Our harbour is in a desperate condition, its stuffed to the gills with sand and the problem is rapidly getting worse, to the point that our season is being cut in half as if its not short enough. Given that most people only manage to get out after work during the week, with the way the tides are we are now only able to do this every second week. I know a lot of people have had this problem in the harbour for many many years, but I'm only experiencing it for the first time this year because of the mooring I have.

It's not even the fact that there is no water in the harbour at low tide for boats to get out, but at least in the past there has been at least a few inches, enough to deter blaggards and kids from walking down into the harbour and messing around the boats. Last week I had a politician call to my door looking for my vote, beside him was our outgoing councilor Mr. Noel Keyes, I put it to them to do something about this, I also put it to them to do something about our fishing by considering artificial reefs, I suggested that the harbour was in so bad a state because of the weir/sand traps up the Dargle being destroyed and not being replaced. I have to say that I got the typical politician response, but at least Mr. Keyes invited me down to discuss this matter further. I wonder if there are any Bray people out there who would be interested in taking up this baton. I'm sick of hearing that we have to wait for the "Bray Marina", recently I heard that this would be at least 15 years before we saw anything in our town in the shape of a marina, why are we waiting ??? 

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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Club Roundup  Our next competition is this coming Sunday May 30th. At this point the weather is doing everything it can to prevent us from fishing it, but we'll have to wait until Sunday to see if it goes ahead. The times are 12.00 to 6.00pm, it's a species competition (catch and return), six of each to count. The rules for the competition are the same ones we hope to use for our open in two weeks time. Checkin will be from 10.00 until 11.00 on the morning. All members are encouraged to attend.

Next week is the biggy, Stella Maris are hosting the two day event in Cahore, more details next week.

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A special thanks: This weeks thanks goes to Helen for the luvly sambo's. 

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Also, Late off the Press, everyone here in the BSA Website Team would like to congratulate Larry "the Slapper" Byrne in catching his very first Thornback Ray, and thankfully for him, he didn't have to bring this species into the Harbour bar in his pocket to get identified ;-) (hope you enjoyed eating it as much as you enjoyed catching it, well done !)

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"Are you tryin to make a T-ope outta me?"      ><)))>

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Update: May 20th, 2004

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"Winner, Neill Driver, Bray Outcasts SAC"

Inchicore's Leinster League Open (Second Leg): " And then there were four", the second leg of the league took place on Sunday with over 60 anglers taking part. This leg was being organized and run by the Inchicore Sea Anglers who operate their club out of Greystone, Co. Wicklow. The competition was run over six hours with the boundaries being between Wicklow Head and Dalkey with an outside limit of three miles. The competition was a catch and return "Species" event with five of each species being awarded various points.

The day itself started magnificently, with the sun beating down and the sea being flat calm. A convoy of boats left Bray Harbour to do the short trip down the coast to Greystones, some of the crew stopping to see if they could catch a few fresh mackerel for bait. The checkin seemed to go without a hitch, but something that I feel we'll see more of over the coming months is the increase in boat owners entering which is causing a shortage of "third-men" resulting in more two-men boats venturing out to sea.

At the stroke of 11.30am boats flew everywhere, with the majority of them availing of the 30 minute motoring time to head back to Dalkey island to see if they could fill their quota before the tide dropped. I chose to head directly out from Cablerock to get my dogfish and whiting out of the way first. Seemed like a great idea at the time but I may have changed it if I had known the way Dalkey fished later in the day on the dropping tide. 

Nearing the end of the day the sea really started to build with a sneaky South-Easter creeping in all the time. 6 o'clock was probably just right for the finish, any longer and it might have got dangerous. Most of the crew from Bray headed back to our own harbour and drove down to Greystones in their cars rather than motoring down in the boats, the sea was just not giving us the choice.

At the card-check-in it was clear that many people seemed to fill over 50% of the the usual six species, Dogs, Whiting, Flats, Wrasse, Cod and Pollock, with a few going on to fill Pouting. Some additional species in the form of Gurnard, and Ray were also caught. But overall everyone came in with fish on their cards.

The eventual winner was Neill Driver, who was well in the top 10 going into the last half an hour, but a superb double of Ray rocketed him up to first place, Well Done !. Our own Martin Kennedy came second which leaves him in first position in Leinster after two events.

Check out the photos of the EVENT

and also the Leinster League TABLE

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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SOMETHING VERY FISHY IS HAPPENING IN THE BAY 

If you're lucky and manage to get to sea a lot during the fishing season, you might experience an event that will be talked about for years to come. It may be a shoal of Pilot Whales playfully breaking water in the bay like what happened last year, or maybe a day where you land over 20 tope in a session and fill a bucket full of gurnard just to add the icing on the cake, or being surrounded by Sea Trout going berserk jumping out of the water just as the sun goes down, but for me, last Tuesday was one of the strangest. Myself, Brian Whelan (Bray Outcasts), and Adam Toole (Bray Outcasts) headed out to sea at around 6.00pm as we do religiously every Tuesday during the summer season to see whats happening. Most of the time we're merely enjoying being out, lead-heading with a light spinning rod or flying around the bay seeing if we can reach Mak-5. But this Tuesday was different.

At around 8.30pm we decided to fly up to the back of Bray Head as we'd heard that there were a few mackerel being caught (the early scouts). A couple of drifts at the northern tip of the mountain produced nothing, but just as we were going to head in for the evening we got a call from another boat that was drifting the southern tip. They were hitting mackerel, off we sped, a couple of drifts produced a few strings of herring, now that was strange enough as they're more normally caught around our coast in December and January, but we did experience little pockets of them last year around the same time.

We continued the drifts with continuing success up to about 9.30pm when we really felt we were pushing it and decided to call it a night, but just as we were about to take off I spotted the fishfinder out of the corner of my eye (this isn't your standard fishfinder that we would have on our boats, Brian has a very sensitive finder that they use in charter boats), the screen was stuffed with fish, I mean completely covered. On went the rigs again and into the water we went, bang, drop after drop produced full strings of herring, some big some small. The strange thing is that they were no more than 10 feet in the water, if you were lucky enough to get past them to about 15 feet, you were pulling up strings of whiting and this was in 60 feet of water. For the next hour we pulled up about 300 fish, choosing to keep the bigger ones. Only 11 mackerel came out of the shoal, but they were huge, well over a pound and a half, easily twice the size of the normal ones we'd catch later in the year. By 10.30pm we were all going to be hung, drawn, and quartered by our better-halves so home we went. Check out the few pics I got.

To top it all, the next morning, Adam Toole's brother (who's a commercial fisherman) pulled up his nets just south of where we were, and in the nets he found three of the weirdest fish he'd ever seen (all dead). It was later confirmed that these were called "LumpSuckers" which are not common to our waters. What a strange 24 hours.

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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Club Roundup  Our next Bray Sea Anglers Master Angler competition is being held on Sunday May 30th between 12.00 and 6.00. It's a species competition and we'll be using the same rules as our Open which is being held two weeks later. For more information on this please contact the Club Secretary.

Stella Marris are hosting their annual Open in Cahore on the June bank holiday weekend, June 5th and 6th. There's a Caribbean Cruise up for grabs as first prize, and the fishing is always fantastic if you get the weather. Positions are extremely limited, but again, contact our Secretary for more details

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A special thanks: This weeks thanks goes to Larry (I'm just going to get a stamper made of his name). Also, Thanks goes to Ciaran Driver who kindly sent me in the photos of the Inchicore presentation.

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"The herr-ing of the dog that bit ya"      ><)))>

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Update: May 13th, 2004

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"Winner, Martin Kennedy, Bray Sea Anglers"

Bray Outcast's Leinster League Open: One down, five to go. You'd never have guessed that it had been eight months since Stella Maris ran the last leg of the 2003 League back in September. The bustle in Bray Harbour was so strong you could feed off it. It was like everyone had been put in a time capsule and shot forward to the next season. 

All the usual suspects turned out from the Leinster Clubs, such as Gordon Darker, Mick Clarges, Warren Doyle, Terry Carolyn, Tony (Beanie) Behan, and Shea O'Neill but to name a few. With over 29 boats and over 80 anglers competing, you can imagine the buzz about the place. I have to compliment the Bray Outcasts for organizing everything so well. With no hiccups at all, it really set the day up to be a  really interesting event.

The competition was an "Animal" event, which for those of you who are not sure what that means, I'll try to give you a brief outline of the rules. The term "animal" means that you can catch fish such as dogfish, ray, bull huss, tope, smooth hound etc, these are all part of the shark family and are typically classed as animal fish. You generally fish on anchor for these species as they're mostly bottom feeders so being stationery is the best approach. The baits that were used on the day were mainly mackerel and squid, but some added crab and sandeel to try and spice up the cocktail. The rig that most people used was a tree-hook trace (the maximum amount of hooks allowed in a competition) with beads and plastic muppets to entice the fish. All rigs are hung from the weight so that the fish can run with the bait without feeling resistance.

The competition was run between 12.30 and 6.00pm with most people choosing to locate themselves somewhere off the back of Bray Head where the ground is more sandy. The weather, although starting off dull had most anglers coming back to shore burnt to a crisp. The winds were also variable to light. The actual fishing produced a good variety of species, with Lesser Spotted Dogfish being the predominant species, some notable others were, smoothhounds, Bull Huss, Ray and the odd Gurnard. The eventual tally of fish caught on the day was 3311 fish (not bad for 80+ anglers) and all fish were returned unharmed to the sea. I also want to point out that the water was alive with jellyfish which is always a good sign, and another boat which was out pleasure fishing from our club caught 13 mackerel, so things are looking slightly up.

The presentation ran as smooth as the rest of the event, with Martin Kennedy from the Bray Sea Anglers being crowned with winner with a catch of 101 lesser spotted dogfish. Martin has now joined the ranks of the elite few who have broken the 100 mark in competition, well done to him. A full list of the winners can be found HERE. 

For some more photos of the presentation CLICK HERE

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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News Alert: Here's a story that broke today on RTE's Aertel service:

WARNING OVER GLOBAL STOCKS OF COD ------------- 

The World Wildlife Fund has warned that cod will disappear from the oceans within 15 years unless fish quotas are drastically reduced. The warning is contained in a report on the world's largest stock of cod in northern Europe's Barents Sea, which is shared between Norway and Russia. The alert is based on the decline in global cod catches, which fell by 70% between 1970 and 2000 and have continued to decline since.

Extract from RTE's Aertel News Service, May 13th, 2004

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Club Roundup  The Leinster IFSA boat league is now in full swing. The next competition is being hosted by the Inchicore Sea Anglers running out of Greystones. This competition is being held this coming Sunday May 16th. For more information please contact your club secretary who will be able to provide you with all the details. 

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A special thanks: This weeks thanks goes to Larry as always had this usual pearly beads on the lookout for a scoop, also, Brian and the Outcasts for running a very enjoyable competition, the bar has been set

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"Don't bite the hand that feeds !"      ><)))>

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Update: May 6th, 2004

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Brian O Gilloway

Annual Trip (Killybegs): Friday April 30th, it's 10.30 in the morning and we're already in the pub. What way were we going to be if this was the pace we were setting? Every year one of our longer serving members takes it upon himself to organize a trip away for some of the local anglers. This year the venue was Killybegs Co. Donegal. When you're told that you're staying in a building that has the accommodation on the top floor, the next floor down has a Chinese (which serves the nicest Sizzling Chilly Monkfish I've ever had), below that is the bar, and finally in the basement is the Nite Club what can you say. At this rate some of us may not even see daylight the whole time they're there.

We headed into Connolly station on the dart to get the 1.30pm Sligo train. The craig on the train was great, it beats driving any day. We arrived in Sligo at 4.30pm and our mini bus was already waiting. Brendan O'Keeney was the owner, and a nice guy as well. The trip up to Killybegs from Sligo was a little over an hour, but between the scenery and the songs, it felt like minutes. Our hotel was called the Cope House and was owned by the same guy who owns the Atlantic Dawn (the largest trawler in the world).

On the Saturday we had arranged to fish the Killybegs angling club Open. 16 of our men paid their fees and boarded their respective boats. The rules were simple, one fish of each species to count. All fish were to be brought in case of a draw. The eventual winner was a local guy who actually won it last year too. It was a draw on species with him and our own Liam O'Callaghan (Jnr) getting seven species each. But unfortunately for Liam the local lad had the better weight.

On the Sunday, ten of the men that weren't suffering from alcohol poisoning ventured out with Brian Mc Gilloway on the MV Meridian. As you know from past articles, I'll always try to be as honest as possible. But I feel that Brian definitely deserves a plug. He worked the whole day for us, he was never satisfied with the catch and was forever apologizing. By the days end he had found us some great marks which we managed to pull seven species off in numbers, with Pollock and Cod over 5lb coming up from the bottom.

We couldn't believe our luck with the weather and the people in the town were helpful and nice. As a whole, from a fishing point of view, I'd probably wait until the middle of the summer if I was ever going again, but I think we all enjoyed it all the same.

The train ended up costing 32.00euros return to Bray each.

The mini bus was 120.00 each way for a 15 seater (Brendans number is 086-6000095)

I don't know how much our hotel was but the "Bay View Hotel" (073-31950) was 75.00euros a night but they will come down if pre booked/

And our good auld skipper was 300.00euros a day (087-2200982 or 074-9731144)

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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Mayday Mayday: There was some crazy commotion in our bay the weekend. One of the largest search operations that we've seen took place after a trawler picked up a mayday signal from a boat on Saturday morning. I think we all know the details at this stage and it's been many a discussion point in the pubs over the weekend about what people think actually happened, but the piece that interested me the most was in the local paper, where they reckoned that the search operation could have an eventual price tag of 1 million euros. If you'd like to read more check out the link below, but to me it hits home the serious need to support your local RNLI. 

Now you will have to register to see this next link but on the upside, it's free and you get to read the Indo on line for nothing.

http://www.unison.ie/bray_people/stories.php3?ca=38&si=1176151&issue_id=10828

Written by Paul Robinson (Bray Sea Angler's)

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Club Roundup  Nothing happening this week. On Sunday we start the Leinster IFSA Boat League with the Bray Outcasts hosting the opener. Check back with us next week to see and hear how it went.

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A special thanks: This weeks thanks goes to Gerry Knight, he has kindly sent us in some information from the IFSA committee to host on the site. The tide is changing, well done!

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"We're all going lookin for LSD on Sunday !"      ><)))>

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