Wexford · Writing
The coast
Selected writing from one stretch of coast.
Fourteen years of writing about one stretch of the Irish south-east, and twelve pieces out of it. Arranged by what they do rather than when they were written. Two pieces from further afield sit apart at the end.
Beginnings
The white blackbird — a first bass on a handline from the deck of the lightship Guillemot at Wexford Quay, with my grandfather. Returned, because it was too small. 2018
A cast — standing in warm clear water to our bellies, a tidal rip running thirty yards out, and one instruction repeated quietly. 2012
Place and season
A season begins shortly — on the satisfaction of knowing a place: the stones along the inner estuary shore, laid in patterns by forces you cannot figure. 2015
August ’05 — three weeks at St Helens when the fish ran day and night on moving water, and a blue and white deceiver did everything asked of it. 2018
Reading water
Coupling — how weather and tide stop being two things you check and become one thing you feel. 2018
on the rocks — why good bites rarely last a whole tide, and why a blank two hours may mean you arrived early rather than wrong. 2017
Afternoon, mesmerised — standing at the edge of a reef in breaking white water, doubting what I was watching. 2017
The fish
A little about the fish — bass as a warm-water species at the edge of its range, and why the Wexford coast sits where it does. 2012
Fidelity — the tagging evidence for how strongly bass return to the same summer feeding grounds. 2024
The argument
Blue space — on the research putting a value on coastal environments and what they do for us. 2019
Submission — my submission to Ireland’s National Nature Restoration Plan: the bass fishery treated as a coastal ecosystem rather than a stock, sourced and self-reviewed. 2026
Now
Days like these — the fly at first light from the shore, then a rising tide over an unseen reef and fish that would not come up. 2026
Tropical
Twice I went a long way from this coast to fish. Both times it sent me back to it.
Anticipation over — nine months of preparation, thousands of miles, and one shot at the first permit I ever cast to. The fly ends up in my elbow. What happens next is the whole point. Belize, 2018
’cuda at the airport — fifty miles south of Andros to a flat where the barracuda queued, and the moment of realising how far out of the ordinary world I had got. Bahamas, 2009
Everything else is in the archive, by year, back to 2012.
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