With the huge blue skies, warm weather, and calm seas out here in Kerry it’s almost as if those two vile days of wind and rain between our two groups didn’t happen. With what I know about how the weather affects my conditions back at home in Cornwall, it was amazing to see the sheer amount of rain we had those two days clear out so quickly to leave decent water again. As much as our lads come on these guided trips predominantly for bass fishing, we also have the most incredible pollack fishing out here that we can go and do when bass conditions are not exactly ideal……………

Almost more than the amount of bass fishing ground around here in Kerry is the perfectly ridiculous amount of potential shore and indeed inshore boat or kayak based pollack fishing. It’s far too easy to be a bass snob when to me it’s a crime to not take advantage of some of the best and most enjoyable lure fishing you can imagine, plus around here you get to fish in truly stunning locations and I bet you any money where you go pollack fishing hasn’t been fished since you were last there. I don’t do fish based snobbery and I don’t pretend to really understand anglers who choose to be ignorant of different opportunities. With a coastline like this I am always left with the one main question out here - covid aside of course - where are all those adventurous lure anglers who like to wander and explore and fish new and breathtaking waters for healthy populations of crash-diving, golden-flanked pollack?

We fish long days out here and we asked our second group whether they’d be interested in a bit of pollack fishing while we were waiting for the better states of tide to have a go at the bass in the calmer conditions. I was obviously hoping they’d say yes because I love being around pollack fishing, and to a man they did. I know there’s an argument for gearing up with more powerful rods and reels for shore based pollack fishing - if I was really going at it myself I probably would - but we’re moving around and to be honest the sort of rods and reels we use for our bass fishing tend to pretty well unless you went targeting particularly deep water like you might find say in the Isles of Scilly.

Our first pollack session also had a decent chance of bass, but to be honest there were so many pollack around I doubt whether any interested bass had a chance of getting on the lures. For a while the fishing went loopy, and it’s such a profoundly joyful thing to be around grown men/anglers who are laughing and giggling and shouting for joy as fish after fish hit their lures. My understanding is that there was once some equally good pollack fishing around the shores of Cornwall, and the secret to such good fishing for them out here in Kerry seems to be the almost complete lack of inshore netting combined with literally no anglers and therefore the multitude of spots where you might catch pollack are receiving essentially zero angling pressure. If only eh? If our first pollack session with our second group was good then I’d suggest that the second session was a bit silly…………..

It’s anybody’s guess when another angler last fished the second spot we took our lads to, but I fancy the odds that nobody else has put a lure into those clear waters surrounded by some outrageously beautiful coastline since John and I last took clients there. There is no other word than awesome to describe the mark and the fishing we had there yesterday afternoon. I think it was Mike who hooked a cracker of a pollack on his very first cast, and from then on it was mayhem as John and I ran around the rocks helping to land fish, lift fish, return fish, break anglers out of snags, re-tackle up, advise on lure changes and techniques, take photos, do some GoPro stuff, keep a very close eye on where the lads were standing, land more fish, change lures, laugh, giggle, and generally have one of the most glorious sessions of any kind of fishing you could ever hope to have. It was ridiculous.

On the technical side of things I still believe that the Fiiish Crazy Sandeel is the most deadly pollack fishing lure ever invented (so far?). For sure it hurts to lose one to a snag or have a few pollack destroy the body of the lure, but bloody hell they are absolutely lethal and I would always advise any of our lads who ask me what gear to bring to make sure they have some Crazy Sandeels in case we go pollack fishing. Big, big respect to Matt from Fiiish, and I still remember the time he showed Nick and I the first sample of “Le Crazy”. He dropped it over the side of his RIB over in northwest France, let the lure sink, ripped it up, let it drop, bang, pollack on!

I was carrying a good number of our new Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless and Sandeel V2 Weedless lures with me, and it was obviously immensely satisfying to clip them on for the lads throughout the session and watch a lot of good pollack coming to these lures. The ground we were fishing was absolutely evil and of course a few lures were lost to Ireland, but without a doubt the weedless option helps with keeping the lures tighter to the bottom and then the edges of the dropoffs where the pollack so often hit. I also put a Seeker on for one of the lads and got him fishing it like you would a metal jig, and in quick succession he hooked two or three pollack as the lure was coming back up the dropoff. To see a decent pollack chasing and then smashing your lure is about as good as it gets to me.

Perhaps the most satisfying pollack of the second session though was the last fish that I think was caught before we needed to get off the mark and yomp it back to the cars. John Quinlan isn’t one for shouting around about the stuff that is working for his many, many clients during the course of a “normal” year, but I do note with interest firstly how many of the Gravity Stick Pulsetail lures he now carries with him, how often he rigs them up on the belly-weighted 6/0 hooks for his clients, and how many of the Pulsetails he carries which are the solid white colour.

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Now solid white isn’t usually a lure colour I tend to reach for first when I target pollack myself, but at the end of a very hectic session which involved a number of lost lures, a fair few lost fish, and even a broken rod which was a sample I’ve been playing with at home so it’s some rather good feedback, John went and rigged a white Gravity Stick Pulsetail lure on one of the J-hook jig heads which is meant for the Savage Gear Sandeel. He gave the lure to Mike and first cast I think he landed a good pollack - simple straight retrieve close to the bottom - but it was the last fish which spat the hook as John tried lifting it which really banged home. John doesn’t do exaggeration but he reckoned it was the biggest fish of the session and with how well that Pulsetail worked after the location had taken such a hammering from us yesterday, well it doesn’t half get me thinking. And yes, the old brain has been bouncing away so much I went and woke up hours before I needed to this morning. Ideas, plans, thoughts, lots to keep thinking about. Did I by any chance mention how much I love it out here in Kerry?!

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Bass are great, but we’ve used this glorious weather/trickier bass conditions to also do some awesome pollack fishing out here

© Henry Gilbey 2023