Donal Geary, skipper of the John-Boy, sent in this report '....Saturday gone, the last day of April, proved to be a fantastic day's fishing aboard the John-Boy. With a group of 9 anglers from the Cuckoo's Nest bar in Dublin, some who travelled down on the Friday and stayed at the Commodore Hotel; more travelled down on the morning. We set out from Cobh at 10am. We weren't too optimistic about our chances as there was a force 3 to 4 easterly and the forecast was for it to increase to force 6. We were greeted at the entrance to the harbour by a large pod of dolphins who put on a great show as we passed Roches Point. We had our first stop about 2 miles south east of the point, where we had been getting some fine cod of late. To our surprise we immediately started catching mackeral, three at a time. The mackeral were so plentiful we couldn't, even with bait, get to the bottom for the cod. When we had a box of bait we went about a mile further south. Unfortunately, some of our crew were now turning a bit pale. We hit the cod straight away with many upto 5lb. However, the wind was freshening all the time, resulting in a very fast drift and a lot of snags and tangles. At about 1:30pm I noticed there were only 3 or 4 anglers still fishing, the rest were in sick bay. I decided to get back to the shelter of the harbour and dropped anchor in the shelter of White Bay where we could have a mug of coffee. While having lunch we boated a thornback ray of 10lb. We also had a few small cod and a few doggies. We then went to the harbour rock and landed 8 conger to 16lb. While this was going on, a box and a half of fine cod were filleted, which would be frozen down by the Commodore Hotel ready for transport back to Dublin in cooler boxes. On our way back to Cobh we saw a small basking shark close to Spike Island...a very unusual sight for April indeed.'
If you'd fancy a day out on the John-Boy, you can contact Donie at http://www.sea-fishing-ireland.com/
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