Scott Belbin leaves Essex behind and takes his family across the Irish Sea to the wild and wonderful fishing of Ireland’s west coast
Ireland is one of my favourite places to fish. Over the best part of 20 years I have been fortunate enough to visit the emerald isle many times. We have enjoyed all manner of angling in various places over the years and enjoyed it all. However, we had never made it much further north than Clifden on the west coast, and this time we hoped to do so.
After watching reports of the tuna fishing from afar for many years, as well as hearing reports of various mixed species competitions, it was somewhere I was keen to visit.
We based the trip around fishing for bluefin tuna with the legendary Adrian Molloy for a couple of days, as well as some general fishing too. However, in short, our first attempt to get here was scuppered, along with many others, by Covid restrictions. Of course, we rescheduled for the nearest opportunity which pushed us two years down the line. September 2022 soon came around and after a busy summer we were on our way to Donegal. We had arranged exactly the same trip as before with one additional person this time as our son Stanley had arrived in the meantime.
We left after finishing our trips on a Sunday evening and made our way across to Holyhead to catch the overnight ferry. One of our crewmen had already gained a head start on us and spent the evening fishing Holyhead in the rain while waiting for the ferry. No surprises to those who know him: it was Stephen Clark. He had managed to winkle out a few species including a scorpion fish until the weather pushed him off. He was catching a different ferry to us so we would meet with him again once in Donegal. The ferry crossing was great and the journey from Dublin to our destination in Kilcar was swift and uneventful.
RHANNAKILLA
Upon arrival we headed out to explore to surrounding area and were hoping to find some shore fishing for the afternoon. We decided to take the coast road and keep an eye out for a likely spot. As is often the case in these places, there were countless fishy looking coves, beaches and rocky outcrops in just a few short miles of coastline. We passed Stephen again who had headed for a beach which was recommended when he had researched the area in the weeks leading up to our trip. We continued on our coastal route and stopped for a while at a beautiful sandy beach for a break. Nice as it was in this calm sandy cove it didn’t scream fish to me. So, after Stanley had befriended a local free roaming dog for a while, we continued along the coast until we found ourselves overlooking Silver Strand which is a vast sandy cove in the shadow of Slieve League mountain. We decided to have lunch overlooking the bay rather than making our way down over 200 steps to the beach and back. The scale of
