Good Morning Jim. Half An Hour After You Left P……. And Me On The Beach I Go Very Angry And Obssed ( I Still Am ) Just As We Were Leaving Our Parking , In A Complete Darkness , We Met A 4*4 Pick Up Packed With People Followed By An Other Vehicule Pulling A Boat ( How Can They Launche A Boat In That Spot ? ) If That Was The………Gang ( I Feel The Adrenaline Pomping As I Write ) I Don’t Understand The Fisheries Or Locals Don’t Get Ride Of The Problem ! In Corsica They Wouldn’t Be At It More Than 24 H ! Will I Have To Erase The Problem Myself ? At The Moment I Am Going Fishing , Will See Later . M….
These are the words of a visiting bass angler to Wexford via text to me last evening. As you can imagine he’s a little pissed off. He called me a few moments ago and vented, understandably, his considerable frustration as he further explained what he saw. He’s traveled a long way and spent a lot of money for an Irish bass angling experience. I still get many calls from people asking for guiding, and even though I don’t guide anymore, I always advise them of conditions and the indications of fish on the coast both good and bad. Just like the old days! This week was a good opportunity for these two anglers to travel from France. Good tides and good conditions.
Whilst Ireland remains the ‘darling’ of bass angling promotion, there often seems no sense to any limit in either number or size of fish promoted, there is an associated risk attached to such activity in that it indirectly attracts some negative aspects of bass angling. Without any sense of planning, co-ordination vision or management foresight regarding conservation, as with most of our natural heritage in this country, there is continued thoughtless and selfless promotion of what we cant wont or don’t want to protect. Its not an infinite resource.
There are many inevitable impact consequences to these two mismanaged components- ‘over-promotion’ without ‘any protection’ – which are resulting in a steadfast deterioration of heritage.
This ‘dark side’ of course is never featured at any time by any person otherwise engaged in utilising the resource to their benefit and self promotion. Strangely this is coupled to the foolish notion and belief that somehow the creation of a wider awareness regarding the size and number of the fish available aligned to the tackle industry will somehow magically make the undesirable aspects go away without having ever to mention the true challenge. Bass angling consumerism will NOT lead to bass conservation, nor does it lead credibility. When was the last time you saw a major lure manufacturer express any opinion in relation to conservation? This issue is further complicated by the underlying, unspoken, naive and poorly imagined concept that any ‘discussion’ about ‘illegal activity’ will surely impact negatively on our precious angling tourism industry. Dragging it into the light might, god forbid, open another kettle of senko worms.
Worse still is the continued utilisation of the bass angling resource without any measured restraint whilst remaining absolved of any sense of responsibility in terms of activity.
Of course when the bass fishing is gone where will the proselytising have gotten us?
There is a duty of care, responsibility and management on any person in respect of the fish and the bass angling environment coupled to situations within which they find themselves either as an angler, a guided angler, a guide or an angling journalist. This is particularly applicable when applied to a vulnerable and easily exploited species like bass.
The fish continue to be exploited in increasingly reckless ways.
Paul Hendricks and Colin McCarthy tour northern Michigan to rock climb, surf, fish, kayak and define what Your Place means. Hendricks writes, “We all have that place. A stretch of river, a mountain lake, an ocean flat which we call ours. Not because we own it or have any sort of right to lay claim to it. It became ours because it gives us more than we can give it. We find a sense of connection to something greater or something less —a north wind brining in a bruising storm across the lake or a nymph clinging to a rock at the bottom of a creek. Sometimes we take people to it so they can have the same sense of respite and awe. Sometimes we keep it private and retreat there when we need it most.”
The Team from – THISISFLY
I was investing more belief and time in the ‘impossibility’ of getting it done. The further I stayed away and avoided the challenge of finding the new fishing the safer I felt. I did this because I began to convince myself, of the many crazy reasons I conjured up, that I didn’t need to stretch myself again, I wasn’t good enough to do it for myself, I was getting lazy. But there was something else too, something deeper that ran differently. I had thought I was avoiding the complications around trying to understand the fishing, getting there and back, finding accommodation, the costs, weather, tides, the usual challenges and countless, thankless hours of trying something new in a new place far from home, trying to figure it all out, fish, no fish, timings, patterns rhythms if any. This is a guide learning to do his job, normal stuff.
But that was only the first part – trying to achieve this and then to present it responsibly as a marketable option to the world on a fishing guide’s budget, invigorating the business differently, well that was just another challenge. The main difficulty was the scope of the learning challenge on a new coast combined with the business rebuild. I had to do this of course for myself. I had always worked out my own fishing, and always will. I thought – “To hell with it this!”
The simple fact was I was avoiding myself and the truth, and when both were confronted, I realised that I didn’t feel like doing it at all. It took me another incredibly difficult season (2012) to realise I was tired in my fishing soul, my spirit was lagging, all engaged energy gone. This was a new and emerging challenge for me.
Had I reached the beginning of the end of something or perhaps realised the possibility of something new?
These notes were written during and over the time when I had decided to close my business as a bass fishing guide. I realised the model I had was broken and I needed to stop. Out of all the time spent fishing for bass, weeks, months, years in fact, (especially the latter years of the guiding service), I had learned that within myself I was content to try and catch fish using the most difficult of methods – flyfishing at sea.
Out of that realisation of contentment and satisfaction THIRTYARDS is slowly emerging.
I’m more relaxed and healthier now and as I look forward to spending the next few years here in Wexford, saltwater fly fishing, I’ve found a different groove. With a few occasional trips to other parts of the Irish coast during the season with friends or in my own company I am extremely eager, content and satisfied along this bass coast.
There remains a lot on and in my mind about bass angling. I often wonder that if I hold my words and thoughts for long enough in my head will something eventually form and only then emerge?
Something I haven’t understood before, something I haven’t been able to reach. Something that I can just see…
Since the death of my father, I’ve needed time to comprehend the significance of his absence. To come to terms with the gap, the gap that my frequent memories try to fill in this ‘hole’ in life. But these remembered moments often leave me grasping at many further things that are beyond me, things I need to finally understand with conviction. I’m getting sentences but they remain beyond my comprehension. Like the solution to time which you find in a dream, it often makes perfect sense when you sleep, until you wake to find you can’t speak it!
Theses ‘memory’ challenges have certainly have made me more reflective on the value of my time spent fishing for bass, and I can’t help but feel they are connected. The memory of the present.
Time and more time spent fishing, bringing me closer to understanding and nearer to the clarity of the ‘value’ that is the hidden secret at the heart of my bass fishing.
But, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
Tony Bennet – September Song
Source – Peter O’Connell – The Clare Champion
Clare is being “poorly served” by the tourism industry, according to Kilkee-based business man and tourism consultant Cillian Murphy, while he believes the county should strive to attract fewer tourists but more bed nights.
Mr Murphy has also suggested that the county is not benefiting sufficiently from the more than one million annual visitors to the Cliffs of Moher, with thousands of tourists arriving on a tour bus and then leaving after their visit without spending a bob.
The former chairman of Loop Head Tourism believes Clare should not try to increase visitor numbers but should seek to provide more accommodation options across the county.
“We do not necessarily need to attract more visitors. The marketing of Clare has been exceptional and has delivered ever-increasing numbers of visitors over the past 20 years. Our problem is we are not reaping the rewards in terms of the local economic benefits in our rural and coastal economies, such as local job opportunities.
“What we need is to get more of them to stay in overnight accommodation. This is where visitor spend can be maximised. They stay, they eat, they shop and they use other local services and activities and, of course, this is where the maximum economic return can be delivered from tourism into the county and where jobs can be created,” he stated.
He made his comments to The Clare Champion having read preliminary Fáilte Ireland findings on hotel accommodation levels in 2016.
“It shows Clare as having one the lowest amounts of hotel accommodation along the Wild Atlantic Way. This is a pretty staggering fact, given that Clare would consider itself to be one of the major tourism players in Ireland,” Mr Murphy said.
According to the Fáilte Ireland 2016 hotel register, Clare has 37 hotels and 2,140 rooms, while Galway has 83 hotels with 4,473 rooms. The West Clare towns of Kilrush and Kilkee have no large-scale hotel that can cater for either sizeable numbers or conferences.
“Last year, a report by the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC), using information from the CSO and Fáilte Ireland, made for some very interesting reading about where 2015 overseas visitors visit once they are in Ireland, how much they spent and where they spent it. Clare was the fifth most visited county in Ireland and the sixth highest spend, with €127m attributed to overseas visitors.
“However, when we dig a little deeper into the figures and look at the average spend per visitor, we find that Clare is ranked 24th out of the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland, with an average spend of €212 per visitor. To continue the comparison with Galway, it is eighth, with an average spend of €350,” Mr Murphy found.
He maintains that “responsible tourism development is about delivering maximum benefits to host communities and minimising the negative impacts of tourism. One of the fundamental questions it asks in pursuit of this is: ‘is tourism using us or are we using tourism?’ On the evidence I can find, it is obvious that tourism is quite definitely using Clare. The people of Clare are particularly poorly served by tourism, given the quality of the attractions, landscape and cultural assets we have”.
Mr Murphy said when driving to Ennis from Kilkee last week, he travelled via Ennistymon and witnessed several tour buses.
“Four full 52-seat coaches, from one operator, passed me heading back to Dublin from the Cliffs of Moher. The trip costs €40 per person, so each bus is generating €2,080 in revenue. Multiplied by four, it equals €8,320 for the coach operator per day.
“I believe, and I am open to correction, that they pay approximately €3 to €5 per person for entry to the Cliffs Of Moher so, allowing for the maximium price, the only revenue the operator is paying into the Clare tourism industry is €1,040 for all four coaches. My guess is it is hardly covering the external costs to the local authority, such as road maintenance, litter or parking provision. All the while, it is filling hotel beds in Dublin. We need to take back control of our natural and cultural assets.
“They need to deliver the maximum return for Clare and its tourism businesses, creating local jobs and a more vibrant local economy,” he continued.
“Perhaps if they were forced to stay at least one night in overnight accommodation, to be able to access the county’s tourism assets, they might invest in hotels in Clare instead of shops on O’Connell Street in Dublin,” Mr Murphy suggested.
“According to a report from 2011, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, estimates each hotel room generates between 1.5 and three jobs directly. Our natural assets are creating those hotel beds and associated jobs in Galway, Dublin and elsewhere. Meanwhile, we have record unemployment levels in coastal communities in Clare. It’s madness!
“We, in Clare, are left with the costs of managing the impacts from this traffic, without deriving appropriate levels of benefit. In business terms, County Clare is being asset-stripped. The tourism sector in Clare, and the rural development directorate within Clare County Council, would be the ideal facilitators of this. It needs to sit up and have a very serious conversation with itself about what needs to be done to ensure tourism development delivers the maximum benefit to its communities. In short, we have to radically change our thinking,” he claimed.
“We need to focus on the capacity for tourism as a development tool rather than an industry and ensure Clare is a place to stay rather than a place to visit. We need to focus our immediate attention on how this county can deliver a considerable number of new hotels and guesthouses and ensure the development of these new businesses is focused in our marginalised rural and coastal communities, to breathe new life into them.
“We need to implement, at policy level, the new Rural Development Strategy, which offers the ideal policy vehicle, the measurable goals of a set amount of newly-created overnight bedrooms within the county, by a stated date,” the Kilkee restaurant owner stated.
“If we ensure the ‘sale’ of our tourism assets only to those who stay in the county, if this policy delivers 1,000 new bedrooms and the resulting 1,500 jobs within the rural economy of Clare over the next three to five years, it will have been a roaring success. We in Clare should be ruthlessly selfish about the use of our natural and cultural assets. Their sole purpose should be to deliver benefit, and opportunities, to Clare people first and foremost. Many of these assets are within our declining rural populations who are most in need of the benefits.
“At the minute, it is absolutely the case that they are delivering the bulk of their economic benefit to external agencies that are sending hundreds of thousands of day-trippers to Clare on 50-seat coaches. It will take bravery and stubbornness to accomplish but the rewards will be worth it in a much more vibrant tourism-based local economy, with far more local employment,” Mr Murphy predicted.
Source – Peter O’Connell – The Clare Champion
There are times when the things you see you sometimes doubt they are actually happening. I’ve seen a lot of things when bass fishing but today’s events were a little new to me. I stood at the edge of a reef with white water breaking in front of me, waves running maybe to a metre high, a little off from crystal clear. The wind was gusting five to six and at times touching seven, rising tide, arriving weather front, the conditions I often seek to flyfish in at any opportunity.
Running through the reef were gulleys that I was intimately familiar with having been in one or two before! At my feet one ran left and to right about two metres deep and half a metre wide, exiting to the sea and deeper water. As I stood unloading line into my tray, my fly, (a large all white sloopy droopy) dangled about 30 cms below the surface of the gulley, I continued to load line and it was then I noticed a large fish simply ‘pectoraling’ a centimeter from the fly. Micro currents entering the gulley caused by waves pushed the fly forward towards the fish, it backed up, its bright blue fins back pedaling, when the fly moved away from the fish it followed closely. The range of movement was perhaps only two meters – the fish behaved as if mesmerised by the fly but did not want to eat it, remaining within a centimeter of the fly as it moved back and forth. The fish was, I guess, perhaps 65 cm’s. I moved the fly with my rod tip and the fish spooked, immediately another larger fish swam up the gulley, seemed to impact with the smaller one, pushed it out of its way and then ate the fly – all hell broke loose as I fought to snap out of my own mesmerised state – bass can move really fast across reefs of shallow water and this one fizzed the line out of the tray really quickly (thank god) and was on the reel in a few seconds.
It went back at close to 72 cms about five minutes later, a nice fish. I had an experience this afternoon, several fish to medium white deceivers and a large fish to a sloopy droopy – combined with witnessing behavioral activity related to the fly that I can seldom see.
I continue to believe as I have done for many years that big bass are strongly attracted to large flies whilst they are moving slowly, very slowly and horizontally, often in places where we least expect to catch them.
The sloopy droopy is an old favourite of mine from around 2008 – Original tied by Joesph Manette – it remains consistently successful when targeting big fish under specific conditions – first tied in Ireland for me by Andy Elliott
THIRTYARDS 
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