23 July saw 2 Blue Sharks for another charter boat -  this is a really good sign for this season.  Limeburner fishing OK - Haddock & Cod scarce but lots of Gurnards, Whiting, few Spurdogs etc.  Millions of Mackeral.  Lost first Common Skate of the season - spat the hook after 15 minutes.    Flatfish and Rays  Ok in bays, but no big flatfish so far.

Nice male Blonde Ray of around 12 pounds from one of the sheltered bays.  Fishing recently has been OK - weather a little unsettled.

Fishing continues mixed.  Lots of Mackeral.  Water temperature now around 13 degrees.  Good numbers of Tope but no bonazas yet.  Wrecks loaded with Coalfish but some good Pollack and a few Ling.  Limeburner & reefs fishing well.  Bays not so good - they have not really got back to the halcion days of May.  No sign of Porbeagles.

Past week fishing has slowly being returning to normal.  Average fishing on the Limeburner and the Bays.  Had a good day on the Audacious with lots of good Pollack.

Cannot wait until this poor period ends.  Fished far wreck - 8 Pollack, 2 Ling and millions of Coalfish.

Seems to be a few Megrim around this year.  Two boated on Rosguill & another 2 on another local boat.

3 tope boated and another boat had a good number of runs.  Hopefully they will be here in numbers from now onwards.

Fishing remains poor to average.  Plenty of Mackeral.  Wrecks have loads of small Coalfish and few good Pollack and Ling.   Tory fishing poorly.  Limeburner and Bays fishing average. 

Rosguill saw her first Tope of 2008 - fine Tope of over 40 pounds - tagged and released.  However, just one Tope for early June was very disapointing.  Another small boat fishing nearby had 2 Tope - again, very disapointing.

Spoke to a local SCUBA diver - he stated that the visibility is absolutely atrocious at the moment & in his memory had only happened once before in 1997.  Then also the fishing had deteriorated, but had recovered in a few weeks when the vis had also improved………………..?????

Fishing on the last week of May has “nose dived”!      Wrecks have lots of small Coalfish and only a few Pollack - no numbers of good sized wreck Pollack and very few Ling.  The Limeburner grounds are fishing average but the Bays have simply stopped producing.

I suppose this is what “Fishing” is all about.

The weather has been fairly settled for around 8 weeks now with mostly east winds & I wonder has this affected the fishing?