Posts Tagged ‘Spider crab’

Bass fishing in Ireland, Invasion of the Spider Crabs

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Prevailing south westerlies over the last week coupled with a rise in temperature up to 16/17 degrees have at last encouraged bass to move inshore. Reports of bass, predominantly schoolies it has to be said, have been posted from Wexford right around to Kerry, with this writer having seen photo’s of a six pounder (Wexford) and a fine eight pounder from a Waterford strand.

A Wexford schoolie for Darren O'Connor.

Planning an evening trip down to a favoured south Wexford beach, a four meter five pm tide linking nicely with a rolling southerly sea, or so I thought. On arrival the wind had turned around north west flattening the sea creating conditions more suited to flounder then bass. Being single minded it was bass or bust, commencing fishing at six bells, an hour after high water, twin 4/0 paternoster traces were baited with lugworm and razor then lobbed sixty meters into the gutter.

Top Wexford bass baits, razor clam and lugworm.

Fishing is a constant learning curve, joined on the beach by Gerry Mitchell and two of his friends Darren and Billy, the lads set up a couple of hundred meters to my right. Other than a couple of schoolies for Darren and an odd flounder things were quite. Regularly putting out big fresh baits, coming on dark around 21.30pm I pulled in a small flounder followed by a biggish spider crab. From then on traces started to come in with an odd hook nipped off, signalling that the spiders had arrived in force.

Spider crab.

Running out of bait about 22.10pm yours truly departed, subsequently as I learned that’s when it all kicked off. Yes the spider crabs had been waging war on the boys traces too, however come 22.30pm Gerry started hitting bass with Billy and Darren making a dent on the flounder population. For two hours the lads were kept busy, funnily enough Gerry in the central position caught a dozen bass up to 55 cms with the boys only beaching flatties, such are the vagaries of fishing.

Gerry Mitchell surf casting on a south Wexford strand.

The above experience rubber stamps a trend which has become very apparent over the last couple of years, backed up also by the writing of Clive Gammon describing Wexford beach fishing in the mid nineteen sixties. Do not venture out surf casting with bait in Wexford until at the earliest dusk, and ideally black dark if you want to be certain of connecting with bass. Yes there will be exceptions, however as a rule of thumb and with a view to better catches this season and beyond, it’s advice that I will be sticking to from now on…….