Ireland is a country of contrast. The protected East Coast with it's rolling green hills always looks mellow, peaceful, even feminine, but in the west it's the opposite where savage Atlantic storms have torn away the soft skin of soil and peat to leave a hard face of masculine cliff and rock, scarred and contorted by the unforgiving sea.

The contrast can be localised too. No where is this more relevant than the Belmullet Peninsula in Co Mayo. The peninsula is a flattenedfinger of land comprising mainly sand dunes with a high point of only 100 metres. Just four miles of sea separate the peninsula's southern tip from Slievemore on Achill Island, this a sentinel of rock guarding the approaches to Blacksod Bay rising sheer from the sea to a height of 669 metres.

Such contrasting geography always gives good fishing and the Blacksod tope and monkfish are well documented, but little has been said about the ground fishing opportunities, pollack, shark and more. Long time angling pal Colin Albert from Cardiff and myself were to meet up with Norman Dunlop of the Central Fisheries Board during the last week of May '95 and research some of the other opportunities available to the visiting angler aboard a new boat working out from Blacksod.

THE BOAT
The "Ave Maria" owned by Martin Geraghty, but skippered by Mike Walker, a local lad with a good knowledge of the local ground gained from commercial fishing, is a larch on oak carvel construction some 34 feet long with a beam of 13 feet. Loads of working room and her sea keeping qualities will become obvious as the tale unfolds.

Equipment is all you could want with a sounder, radar, GPS system, VHF radio etc, and the full safety gear conforming to the new DTI rulings including a 15 man life raft. She cruises at about 7 knots and is licensed for 12 anglers, but 8 will have stacks of room.

THE BATTLE OF BLACK ROCK
The first day dawned fair, but with a freshening southwest windcreating a steady but easy swell between Blacksod and Achill Island as we motored out to Black Rock.

This primeval relic, crowned by an automatic lighthouse, stabs through the surface 82 metres high and sits 4.5 miles out into the open Atlantic. It's just 1.5 hours steaming from "Ave Maria's" moorings, but has been fished only a few times in the past decade.

Only the lee east side was fishable, the west side taking the fullforce of a southwesterly swell that crashed a good 30 feet up the rock. The drift started on the northeast corner bringing us tight in towards the rock over rising pinnacles. I sent a black Redgill down into the depths. It had been 6 months since I'd last fished a 'gill over pollack, but instincts took over and it was like I'd never fished any other way. Second drop down a pollack left it's home, ate my eel, and the reel gave line through a pulsing rod tip. I love it!

Norman was also into fish, average reef pollack these upto 8lbs. Clouds of fish showed on the sounder, but though pollack came to the 'gills fairly steadily we had to work for these fish. Why? The flooding tide pushes through a small gap between Black Rock and a smaller broken off finger which, in the latter part of the drift, pushes the boat outwards again over mixed broken ground. This was where the lazy pollack were really shoaled up tight letting the tide passing through the gap bring their food to them. But still the fish refused to bite freely. Lengthening the drift further away from the rock over a rough bottom

Colin found cod to 4lbs on a pirk, Norman added cod, coalfish and ling to his tally on baited feathers, with ling and cod coming to my muppet rig. This was more like it!

We managed only four drifts before a worsening sea pushed us closer in towards Duvillaun More Island where more pollack to 5lbs, ling and codling came over the gunnels.

DAY 2
The second day gave the answer why the pollack at Black Rock seemed edgy. The wind had swung southeasterly and was a steady 5 and building pushing persistent drizzle in to your face.

We tried to get shelter from Achill Island tight in under Slievemore and in to Annagh Bay. This is the most dramatic scenery I've ever fished amongst, almost supernatural and magical with an air of the unknown and unexplored amongst it's greying scree, black rock face and green shaded cliff. Only a dead soul could fail to be moved by what your eyes see.

The ground here is rock giving way to shingle banks and sand in depths from 16 metres to 35 metres. Common skate, turbot, megrim, as well as cod, gurnards and the rest lurk here and I was itching to drift with big pollack fillets, plus put a shark bait out aimed at porbeagles, but the wind was now near an 8 and we managed only a couple of pollack before we had to head for home in an atrocious sea with a swell that crested the boat, then sent her crashing down through upto 10 feet of thin air to bury herself in green foaming water, yet persistently she rose again to the challenge of the next wave. This was not for the faint hearted and I feared she may spring a plank, but doubted the design of many modern hulls in seas such as these. That night the boats moored in Blacksod had to move north into the upper reaches of Blacksod Bay to Saleen Harbour for protection. The weather had dampened our spirits and over the next 48 hours it swung northeast, back to east and southeast staying force 8 and 9 at times and carrying heavy rain with the ferries at Dublin and Rosslare being cancelled, then into the south where it dropped to a steady 6. This cost us two precious days at sea.

We fished the shore marks at Ballyglass Lighthouse and another rock mark at Frenchport taking conger and coalfish, we tried for wrasse, span for pollack, put big fish baits on the bottom in 50feet of water for huss, but the east based wind limited both the marks we could safely fish and the fish's inclination to feed. Even the dogs disappeared. Ireland's always favoured me in the past, but this time she slapped my face with a firm "no!"

GUINNESS TO THE RESCUE
We were staying with Martin Geraghty and his wife Josephine at their guest house "Bru Chlann Lir" and Josephine's superb cooking was the best remedy for our limited success so far. That and some drowning of our sorrows with probably the best pint of Guinness I've ever tasted at John-Jo's bar in Aghleam. The bar is significant because above the fireplace is an ancient Admiralty chart with depths in good old fathoms and with far more detail on it than that given on the modern charts. We soaked up that information with a view to fishing high up inside the shelter of Blacksod Bay in a deep channel that sits roughly mid way between Claggan Point in the east and Ardmore Point to the west.

The following morning with the wind in the south and forecast to go west we headed out towards Blacksod Buoy, first to drift for the rays. They get thornbacks, small eyed's, odd blonde's and spotted rays here, with turbot as you drift across the rising banks north of Kinfinalta Point. We fished both whole flapper mackerel baits and small fillets behind attractor spoons, but only Norman caught. This a 3lb spotted ray which was tagged and returned.

We moved north now towards the deep channel. Good tope are taken here and monkfish are possible, but just like back home in Wales the warm weather of late April here had given way to colder northerly and easterly winds during May and the season seemed to be late starting. I doubted our chances of tope, and especially so with the current changeable weather pattern.

We started uptiding mackerel baits, but the boat was swinging in a huge arc and kept dragging anchor in the soft mud bottom as the windgusted to gale force as it changed direction.

I changed from uptiding and fixed a releasable balloon above the trace taking the lead weight off and used the wind to trot the bait 80yds astern, then yanked on the line to free the balloon.

This was the better tactic keeping me more in touch with the bait and it instantly produced dogfish. Then a steady run resulted in a decent huss about 7lbs coming aboard. Norman and Colin continued to pull out dogfish on the bottom baits hoping for a thornback take, but the ray were absent along with the tope.

I was fishing a second rod with a two hook rig on and found dabs in obliging mood. These took lug dug inside Elly Bay the day before with a thin strip of squid dyed red added as an tipping attractor. The dabs wanted the bait on the move, so this rod was fished to a fairly tight line allowing the swinging boat to drag the bait across the seabed.

THE LAST DAY
Okay, it had abated a bit. It was down to a steady 5 northwesterly and the forecast was giving it going lighter as the day progressed. It was still far from perfect with rain threatening. As the boat was being readied for the days fishing on the mooring I set up a 2 hook rig baited with lug and lobbed a short cast in between the mooring buoys of two boats. I was sorting tackle for the rest of the day when I noticed the rod tip twitch a couple of times and go slack. Tightening the line produced a series of bumps, then a steady pressure with the typical nose diving antics of a flounder. A fish about 1lb.

Motoring around Blacksod Point brought us onto roughish ground and immediately a good showing of concentrated fish appeared on the sounder. Norman was first in with a double header of coalies to 4lbs on baited feathers.

BREAKER, BREAKER
A mark I was keen to look at was the Achill Breaker. This a lump of rock coming up off the seabed from 35 metres to just 14 metres and laying just half a mile south of Duvillaun More island. This breaks, as the name suggests, in gales.

The swell was still big and getting the drift right was difficult, but we found the rock and as you can see from the sounder trace I brought home, there were big concentrations of fish on the downtide side of the rock. Black Redgills took pollack to 6lbs, but again, the number of fish actually willing to feed was disappointing. Colin also took a mackerel, our only one of the whole week and on a Redgill on one of these drifts. We poked our nose out into the open ground again between Duvillaun and Black Rock. We were drifting in long open swells upto 12feet high, but the boat rode the sea extremely well and we managed to fish for about 30 minutes, but the speed of the drift was too quick as we were being pushed along by the wind as well as the tide.

We moved close inshore taking smaller pollack, codling etc, but theweek ended where it started in very changeable weather patterns leaving us with a frustrating glimpse of some amazing fishing marks all within an hour and a bits steaming time.

CONCLUSION
With hindsight, I think the seasons cold and late start resulting inlimited food supply was keeping the numbers of pollack down, and those already inshore were tightly bunched and hardly feeding as so often happens during periods of easterly winds. The same could be said for the cleaner ground species to some extent.

This area normally heaves with fish. Both the Irish porbeagle and blue shark records are held here and shark are always where the biggest concentrations of fish are. Pollack abound everywhere and 15lb plus fish are known to exist at Black Rock and on the Achill Breaker. The mixed rough ground yields ling and cod to over 20lbs, coalfish, rays, huss, conger, cuckoo and ballan wrasse. There are megrim, common skate, turbot, brill and huge gurnards reported close in off the north side of Achill Island at Annagh Bay.

The clean ground inside Blacksod not only produces rays, tope and monks, but also the gurnards, turbot, plaice and spurdog.

Normally, if the weather is bad from any quarter bar southeast, you'd be afloat inside the protection of Blacksod Bay and quite comfortable. The weather we had was about the worst you're likely to experience and in what was really only two and half full days afloat we managed 10 species.

WHEN TO GO
Mid June on looks the best bet, though I've fished this general area before as early as May and done well on pollack, coalies and cod.

Expect excellent ground fishing for all species throughout July through until late October. The tope show as early as the 24th of May staying through the early summer before thinning out.

For porbeagles, take a chance on the weather during May and again in September. For blue shark go for July through to October.

The sounder readings don't lie. The ground feature is some of the best I've seen. It's a lousy feeling to be so close to having a real go at these marks and being defeated by the weather. But that's fishing!

ALTERNATIVES
If you want to do some shore fishing, then try for the sea trout from the beaches facing east into Blacksod Bay. Mackerel strip is the best bait. There are dogfish, flounders, plaice, rays, and I reckon sole are possible here too, especially close to the mud banks towards Belmullet. The surf beaches facing due west into the open Atlantic are good for dabs, rays, sea trout, and bass have been taken. Keen anglers and good casters may also take tope during calm weather in June. The autumn returns of codling, whiting, coalfish and flatfish are also promising.

Numerous rock marks exist facing in towards Broadhaven Bay north of Belmullet. Use a Ordnance Survey map against an admiralty chart to locate the deeper water. I like the look of Ballyglass Pier for conger and mullet, or the rocks just to the left of the pier casting onto clean sand for rays, turbot and flatfish.

Wrasse, huss, conger and pollack can be taken from the rocks by Ballyglass Lighthouse. Closer to home, try the rock marks west of Blacksod Point for pollack, conger, huss, wrasse and codling.

BAIT AND TACKLE
Nallon's is the tackle shop in Belmullet. I was impressed with this shop as it carries far more up to date gear than most of the shops in my home area. They also stock mackerel and other frozen baits, plus import fresh king rag from Dublin, but phone in your order first.

All the bays running the east side of the peninsula hold lug in vast quantities. It's easy digging, too.

WHERE WE STAYED
Bru Chlann Lir is a modern built bungalow with views to the Atlantic and Blacksod Bay, Board Failte approved, all rooms having an en suite. Purely with anglers in mind, there is also a tackle and drying room available. Josephine Geraghty is not just famous for her breakfast's and evening meals, but also for the packed lunches she provides to keep you going whilst at sea. Going to Josephine's was like going home to Mum.

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