I'm surprised no one's done this yet but Happy New Year to all!!:friday
Hope you all have a great year with good diving, forageing and of course spearing.
Hope you all have a great year with good diving, forageing and of course spearing.
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Ireland Spearing, 2011
- Thread startersunfish
- Start date
Thread Status: Hello
, There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
Sunfish that honour could only be left for the FOY winner!
Happy new year to all, hope everyone had a good one. I have a sore head to show for it anyway.
Myself, Regan and ClimbingPerch got out for one last dive of the year yesterday. We hit the road early and headed for Connemara to a suspected scallop spot. Thumbs up to Climbingperch for sharing his local intel with us.
Bobdonny, the spot you said doesn't sound like a scallop spot, turned out to be a scallop spot
There was a bit of a trek down to the spot but the area is so picturesque it was worth it. The water temp was a cool 8 degrees, max depth we were diving to was 5.5m. Although, we were finding scallops in a little under 2m of water, must be one of them rare occassions. Viz was around 8-10m.
There was no fish but apart from that there was loads of life on the sea bed, anenomes, crabs, etc. A seal even popped his head up beside us to say hello.
After a 2 hour dive we came out with over 70 scallops. Great finish to the year!
Happy new year to all, hope everyone had a good one. I have a sore head to show for it anyway.
Myself, Regan and ClimbingPerch got out for one last dive of the year yesterday. We hit the road early and headed for Connemara to a suspected scallop spot. Thumbs up to Climbingperch for sharing his local intel with us.
Bobdonny, the spot you said doesn't sound like a scallop spot, turned out to be a scallop spot
There was a bit of a trek down to the spot but the area is so picturesque it was worth it. The water temp was a cool 8 degrees, max depth we were diving to was 5.5m. Although, we were finding scallops in a little under 2m of water, must be one of them rare occassions
. Viz was around 8-10m. There was no fish but apart from that there was loads of life on the sea bed, anenomes, crabs, etc. A seal even popped his head up beside us to say hello.
After a 2 hour dive we came out with over 70 scallops. Great finish to the year!
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Hi everyone Happy New Year to you all.
Like Fitzy said was good to get out for one last dive of the year, its a beautiful spot in fact the whole area is amazing. Reagan even got to understand how turf is cut straight from the bog, he also got some pics of sheep to make his N.Z mates jealous !!!!!
Once we got our eyes in so to speak it was easy pick up the scallops ( in fact lads as we discovered ourselves and john confirmed with me last night most of them are to the left of where we entered). Some of them were huge measuring over 170mm across there were also some oysters to be had picture of one below. Fair play to Reagan who at one stage dragged a bag with 20kilos of scallops 100m back to shore to empty it I was out of breath just looking at him:t
Unfortunately only small fish were seen but I suspect there may be some flatties where the river enters the bay. Anyway cheers for the dive lads talk to you soon.
Like Fitzy said was good to get out for one last dive of the year, its a beautiful spot in fact the whole area is amazing. Reagan even got to understand how turf is cut straight from the bog
, he also got some pics of sheep to make his N.Z mates jealous !!!!!Once we got our eyes in so to speak it was easy pick up the scallops ( in fact lads as we discovered ourselves and john confirmed with me last night most of them are to the left of where we entered). Some of them were huge measuring over 170mm across there were also some oysters to be had picture of one below. Fair play to Reagan who at one stage dragged a bag with 20kilos of scallops 100m back to shore to empty it I was out of breath just looking at him:t
Unfortunately only small fish were seen but I suspect there may be some flatties where the river enters the bay. Anyway cheers for the dive lads talk to you soon.
Attachments
Happy New Year guys
Sunfish Ive made this thread a sticky so it'll stay at the top
Heres to a Good Year
Oh and Great haul on the Scallops
Sunfish Ive made this thread a sticky so it'll stay at the top
Heres to a Good Year
Oh and Great haul on the Scallops
Happy , Happy , Happy ..........
So much scallops lads , congrats on that.
i will try to go out tomorrow . still have that Gopro camera , will try to film something , gona a look how it works underwater. Tomorrow - Guinness and Scallops ...... can't wait. :friday
So much scallops lads , congrats on that.
i will try to go out tomorrow . still have that Gopro camera , will try to film something , gona a look how it works underwater. Tomorrow - Guinness and Scallops ...... can't wait. :friday
Scallops will be in all those area's but inshore you need a nice warm thermocline. The west coast is good as it has nice long bays and islands and warm water from the gulf stream is pushed up these bays, and there is little swell.
Unfortunately the east coast doesn't have either of these luxuries. Possibly, Youghal and Waterford may have them in their estuaries, but the level of pollution would be high and its unlikely that there would be the suitable thermocline. They are apparently abundant in Cork harbour (+ oysters), but again, the pollution may put people off.
I haven't been out all year been busy with family and taking down decorations... however I did just read a report of good numbers of bass being caught locally so I may just have to get wet.... but the weather doesn't look great for my next few days off (mon/tues/wed) maybe west to scout a few new scallop spots?
Unfortunately the east coast doesn't have either of these luxuries. Possibly, Youghal and Waterford may have them in their estuaries, but the level of pollution would be high and its unlikely that there would be the suitable thermocline. They are apparently abundant in Cork harbour (+ oysters), but again, the pollution may put people off.
I haven't been out all year
been busy with family and taking down decorations... however I did just read a report of good numbers of bass being caught locally so I may just have to get wet.... but the weather doesn't look great for my next few days off (mon/tues/wed) maybe west to scout a few new scallop spots?
Hi dara,
We had a brief discussion on this topic at the end of last year (read pages 90 and 91:
http://forums.deeperblue.com/ireland/85259-ireland-spearing-2010-a-90.html
You can get scallops out of any depth water; you could pick them out of the sand on low-tide, or dredge for them in 50+ m of water. The depth depends entirely on location. While the scallops we got on New Years Eve were in 5-6m water, the vast majority I've got were in about 12m of water. Coastline you'd start on would be a sand beach (not a surf beach), with a sea floor which would be what I describe as 'broken sand' (basically, sand/small stones or shells and maybe sea grass). Have a look at this vid to get an idea of the sea floor:
Scallops are always trial and error. If you can get some local knowledge about the general area where people are getting them, that's all you need. People aren't going to give you the GPS co-ordinates of their favourite spots, so just swim around until you find some. You might cover a lot of ground for the first few dives trying to find them. But once you've found a good spot, it's relatively easy to keep going back there and get a feed of scallops in 30-60 mins, even on a shore dive.
Good luck with the hunt! :blackeye
We had a brief discussion on this topic at the end of last year (read pages 90 and 91:
http://forums.deeperblue.com/ireland/85259-ireland-spearing-2010-a-90.html
You can get scallops out of any depth water; you could pick them out of the sand on low-tide, or dredge for them in 50+ m of water. The depth depends entirely on location. While the scallops we got on New Years Eve were in 5-6m water, the vast majority I've got were in about 12m of water. Coastline you'd start on would be a sand beach (not a surf beach), with a sea floor which would be what I describe as 'broken sand' (basically, sand/small stones or shells and maybe sea grass). Have a look at this vid to get an idea of the sea floor:
Scallops are always trial and error. If you can get some local knowledge about the general area where people are getting them, that's all you need. People aren't going to give you the GPS co-ordinates of their favourite spots, so just swim around until you find some. You might cover a lot of ground for the first few dives trying to find them. But once you've found a good spot, it's relatively easy to keep going back there and get a feed of scallops in 30-60 mins, even on a shore dive.
Good luck with the hunt! :blackeye
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I haven't been out all year
Hi Rob, there are a few bass around all year but in my opinion there aren't enough to make it worth diving for them. I'll be very surprised if you manage to bag one before March, especially in water less than 7 metres deep. They don't feed in water below 9 degrees celcius so they have no need to swim through their summer shallow water haunts.
If you see silver fish in the shallows at this time of year they're almost certainly mullet.
Thats what I thought too Dave. But after I posted the above on this thread another bloke on the angling thread posted another catch from Cork. He fished what sounded like a holding area with two rods out deep and shallow and caught a bass on the rising tide on the shallow.... a nice 4lber.
The other guy from cork caught 3 from 3 to 4.5lb.
The last Bass I caught was on the 23rd of Nov but granted the water temp was 9'C. I haven't been out swimming to any bass spots since then but I may go out soon to take a look around... gotta work off some mine pie's first I think to get into the suit
Be it bass or cod I've got to catch something otherwise I'll be shopping in Tesco's for my fish... I'd even almost take out the rod
Be it bass or cod I've got to catch something otherwise I'll be shopping in Tesco's for my fish... I'd even almost take out the rod
Ah C'mon, i was already sooo jealous of you guys and all those loverly Irish bass that you have, and now you say you have Tesco's too!!! its just too much. I really do miss Tesco's (is that sad?)
Hehe
For what its worth tesco's entered out country by buying out quinnsworth.... I miss them... yellow label till I die
Just got a new Omer Alien mask, whats the best thing for scrubbing the inside lens to stop it from fogging up. I used to use cif, any suggestions on what to use and how to do it.
Happy New Year to Y'all....I managed to get a swim in for half an hour on Tuesday. The viz was so bad I couldn't see the end of my spear and though it appeared calm I was being rocked about quite a bit by a strong current. Temp on my watch said 6c but I'm not sure how accurate that is...my hands started to sting after half an hour but the rest of me was fine.
Well done on the Scallops lads....I'm dead jealous. I checked the viz today but it was murky as hell down here, I'd love to get catching some flatties now but I'll have to wait until it clears up a bit or start finding new spots.
Anyways, hope you all have a wonderful New Year !
Well done on the Scallops lads....I'm dead jealous. I checked the viz today but it was murky as hell down here, I'd love to get catching some flatties now but I'll have to wait until it clears up a bit or start finding new spots.
Anyways, hope you all have a wonderful New Year !