Our new 11m Viglante with twin 320hp Turbo Diesels
About Us
Donegal Bay is the ideal sea-angling venue; from our base Donegal Town we have easy access to the entire bay which is one of the most diverse fishing grounds in Ireland. On our doorstep are famous tope marks where we can fish skate, ray, tope as well as flatties and even monk.
This area is full of estuarine channels with a sandy muddy bottom and deep scoured holes, the bottom dwelling fish congregate in these holes waiting for lunch to come to them on the tide. We sit uptide on a heavy sand anchor with a rubby dubby bag on the anchor chain and set ground baits. While we are waiting it is the norm to fish light tackle for flatties.
A little further west we fish reefs where there are nice ledges and drop offs. Sometimes we drift the reefs and at other times we fish on the anchor at the reef edge or on sandy bottom areas between the reefs or patches of hard ground. Here we target john dory, wrasse, pollock, cod, gurnard, pouting, ling, conger, bream, coalies, garfish etc. We have even caught squid and two different types of octopus on these marks. We fish shark from June to October, the area is very good for big blue shark who cruise the north east atlantic all year and move inshore this time of year. Porbegle, mako, thresher and six-gilled shark are also known in the area.
Recently we have equipped the charter boat with trolling gear and will be targeting albacore when they next show up off our coast. The giant bluefin tuna is of course hot on our list of priorities and to this end we are fully equipped and ready to go. I have been picking Adrian Molloy and Michael Callaghan’s brain in this regard and am confident we will put one on the boat if they play ball this year.
Doorin and St John's point shelter the inner bay from the north and west and abound in good hard ground fishing and spectacular dive sites. The harbours at Mountcharles, Inver, Killybegs and Teelin are an easy steam and provide ideal pick up points for fishermen and divers staying in the surrounding areas.
Murvah, Rossnowlagh, Creevy, Ballyshannon, Bundoran, Tullaghan and Mullachmore are to the south of the bay and these areas provide great surf fishing.
We can bring the boat right inshore and fish the surf on a heavy sand anchor. The species of note here is bass but the prospect of fishing mackerel on fly-fishing gear is also very exciting.
We also pick up in Creevy, Bundoran and Mullachmore if that is more convenient.