People: 34 competitors
Duration: saturday to sunday
Tide: varied
Weather: absolutley phenomal, like summer it was
Bait: sandeel, mac, maddies, rag, lug and wraps on my part
Rigs: varied
Results: thornbacks, dogs, coalies, turbot, flounder and rockling.
Report:
the preparation for this comp was pretty dedicated i have to say, with a week to go i made it my goal to get all my rigs tied and service all the reels, this of course was time consuming but was easily manageable unlike trying to collect bait. after managing to succsefully destroy 300 or 400 of richard gormley's nicest kerry maddies, wednesday evening after college saw myself and fellow team member paul whelan dig bait on some fairly barron spots to say the least, masterkeane popped down to lend a had too only to see our maddie spot from last year which produced some great worms and fair numbers too was vaccant, not too worry. a change to the lug beds was in order and this proved no better, 1 hour of digging saw 180 lug in the bucket, of which size im not going to say. so fresh bait was pretty elusive for a man with no car. a visit to the local tackle shop saw me load up with some frozen ammo mac and sandeels and 80 precious lug of decent size, i had a few packets of wraps in the freezer and luckily mick o'sullivan offered me a few packs of his sandeels which were perfect size for flats, so in conclusion if connacht fish had decided they wern't into frozen bait that weekend i was royaly ...
friday evening saw team leinster leave for connemara, a pit stop in athlone was made it has to be said, thank god for subway. that new road is fantastic, we were in galway in no time but the road to ciffden is as slow as always. an endless amount of bog, lakes, sheep and more lakes kept us company for over an hour when out of nowhere sprouted this town, a random piece of construction if ever i saw one. after checking in to the hotel, a fast shower ensued and it was off to the bar.
the meeting and peg draw kicked off around nine confirming the venues as gurteen, renvyle and lettergesh. the draw left me with pegs 19, 26 and 26, nothing too inspiring there. team leinster headed back up to the rooms and got some traces tied and discussed tactics for the first session on gurteen.
after a dodgy breakfast of under cooked pudding, cold bacon and wierd sausages, which i refrained from, i settled for a bowl of fruit, we departed for gurteen. on arrival to the beach it looked beautifull, flat calm, sunny with a gentle breezer coming off our backs, all the components for a tough day at the office sadly, some cloud cover would have been the icing. i was pegged between stephen o'sullivan and dean q'uigley, this wasnt going to be easy. it was obvious everyone had intentions of giniging baits out over the eel grass beds and i was no exception. i opted with a two hook up clipped down, size 2 kamasans and a flier in close with a size 4 kamasan. with an hour gone only a small flounder had come in off the beach, i was busy talking away to chris feeney and mick curtin when all of a sudden i saw a gentle pull down on my rod tip. i looked like the tell tell signs of a thornie, i decided to leave it be for a few minutes. with my back turnt while baiting a new trace i turnt back around to see my ine had gone slack. i gentley reeled into a bit of weight which was pulling back, surely this wasnt a piece of weed! i kept it coming and sure enoug a dark shadow emerged from the surf, damn it really looked like a piece of weed or the sister of the sock paul whelan reeled in earlier. thankfully though when the wave receeded a perfectly formed thorny lay beached. straight into the bucket and out went another trace. 37cm she measured, i was off the mark and on the most difficult expected session of the weekend thank .... on the very same cast dean landed a dog and stephen landed a small flounder on the flier, so it woud appear a few fish were moving. sadly it was not the case, that was it for the most part, a few more fish tricked in with warren brown and ger doran both taking a ray each and a few good flounder too popped up for a few of the other lads. work still needed to be done, i wanted a good showing. the flier started to prove its worth with both ger and dean getting a flounder on them. surely not! eventually my flier proved dividence with a 20cm specimen coming in with an hour to go on straight mac. the little beauty gave me first place by the narrowist of margins, 1cm. at lines up, only 9 of the 18 competititors in the under 21's category caught fish, even worse only 2 out of the 16's weighed in. it was tough going.
after a brief pit stop and an infamous well done rare steak in cliffden we departed for the stony beach in renvyle for session 2, i had done well but needed to keep it going. the beach was steep enough and screamed mixed ground, it was obvious it was going to be a doggie bash of sorts. i opted to fish a three hook clip down at distance with sandeel and mac baits. a few fish came in in daylight including a couple of nice ray for warren, ger and paul. the beach was effectivly split into two zones, every where from peg 29 upwards seemed to be horsing fish inwith everyone else really having to work for them. i started off missing two solid doggie bites in two casts, god were they finicky. i eventully broke my duck on the following casting landing one. it was really what i needed to get my head up, next cast saw me land another and the cast after that i missed another bite. it was the same for everyone, dogs were being dropped and missed left right and centre. lack off bites over slack water and the sign of the odd rockling coming in saw me change tactics. i opted to fish a three hook flapper with lug and mac baits in the gutter, i was rewarded with a treble, sadly only two fish made the rule, a little coalie and a good rockling. the dogs seemed to have returned and i need high scoring fish so despite knowing i probably could have scratched a few more rockas out of it i went after wow wows again. sure enough the next cast had me into another dog, i caught his little eyes with the headlamp as he cames toward the beach, about 1 foot from the sand he turnt around and swam off, it was gut wrenchin. last cast saw me land my final fish another dog. that one measily dogfish would have pushed me right up the zone placings and would have led to a much less stressful next day. i finshed 10th in the zone which was not a disaster but wasnt great, despite having a higher fish count than other high scoring rays and dogs pushed me down the list. with socres totted up i was third overall going into the next day with it all to play for, it was exceptionaly close to call with anyone from 9th to 1st in the mix.
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session three saw us on a flat calm lettergesh, as nice as it looked, fishy it didnt. everyone was after flatties here, so at kick off we all lobbed our baits into the reminants of whatever surf there was. after the first cast most of the competitors were rewarded with flatties, ger doran to the right of me pulled a double in and paul whelan to the left of me mirrored this. the tied continued to ebb and with it the fishing died off , i had missed my window and blanked. chris feeney did the unimaginable and pulled a dog from a mound of kelp about 60 yards out and warren brown was still adding to his fish count. i waited and waited for the tide to kick back in, but it was proving to be an eternity, i knew with the beginnings of a rising tide the fish would start moving around and feeding again. with less than half an hour to go the tide began to flood and after recieving some advice from the manager i fished three small sandeel baits in the surf and puled a beautifull little turbot, i was so pleased to see him, i had waited 3 and half hour for this, the next cast i caught its identicle twin and got my fish count to two, which put me 9th in the zone, not great but i might have been enough.
the closest of finishes left me and paul whelan tied for 5th spot and the final spot on the team. tied on points it was a true tie breaker, my 1st place on gurteen gave me the edge however and when my name was called out i was ecstatic.
i'd like to thank peter flahive as well for driving us around and getting all the hard work done doing the scores up in the dead of night when he should have been eating.
