That's (A bit) better...

With the arrival of Padraig from Tuam a couple of days ago my unofficial "Guiding" season began and in all honesty I wasn't expecting much from the day game having proved to myself too often this summer that fish are too few and far between to make it worthwhile. The first mission proved this reasoning, three prime locations were fished at key times to no avail so plans were made join the night shift. Our first night session was poor with only one fish between us in a 2 hr session but lessons were learned and we repeated our plan on the second evening with better results. When I arrive for a night session I prefer to arrive at dusk, settle in and asses the conditions while its still light, I also like to start by fishing at range my theory being that the fish gain confidence and move into the shallows to hunt as the night progresses. Typically I use smaller subtle metals and flutter type baits that also allow me to fish the water column from top to bottom and probe any known or unknown gullies and other variations in depth and the plan worked from the off with first fish coming to a 25g Tackle House

Pboy jig in Sandeel pattern which perfectly "matched the hatch" of Sandeels which disturbed the surface in their thousands around our feet as the small wave rolled into the strand that only hours previously was thronging with holiday makers. Now it was all ours, ours and the natural world's. We moved along the strand and the second fish came just as the light was fading, I'd followed my plan and stepped up slightly in size to the smaller brother of my favourite IMA Barbarossa 120, the 95, rigged with the standard trebles rather than my usual assist hook setup (See above). Sometimes you carry a lure for ages just waiting for the right situation to unleash it this was one of those occasions with the 95. Encouraged we moved on to another strand as I felt the good conditions of the previous days had improved even further with the light onshore breeze and cloud cover hiding the moon helping the light levels to drop quickly. As an aside it was interesting to note the abundance of tiny fluorescent charged life forms on the leading edge of the surf that had been completely absent the night before, I have no idea why. At the second strand after various changes we stepped up to large shallow running minnows in the form of Daiwa shore line shiner 17 F-G's which resulted in the best fish of the night, things were really going to plan at this stage but as time pushed on and no further action occurred we decided to call it a night. To be continued (Tonight) ;-)