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Garron Point

Rock mark · Salt water · in The Causeway and Antrim coast

A basalt and chalk headland below the Garron plateau where the coast road is squeezed onto a shelf between the cliff and the sea, with a bed of broken boulder and reef offshore that two independent guides describe as among the roughest fishable ground in Northern Ireland. The ledges south of the point, between a ruined pier and a disused quay, are the fished platform.

Safety: cliffs and rock platforms — can cause serious injury or death. 3 more points apply here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

FishingHQ describes what this place is, not whether you may fish it. Access, permits and who to ask.

What you can catch here

Documented at this place, grouped by how you would be fishing, with how strongly the sources support each one. This is what has been written down, not a forecast, and being listed is never permission to fish.

From the shore · 7

Spearfishing · 2

What these strengths mean
Established quarry
Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
Seasonal
Well supported, and concentrated in part of the year rather than spread through it.
Places, accounts and sources are counted separately
A fish documented once at each of six marks is still documented once at each of six marks. Breadth is reported as a place count and never raises the strength, and sources are deduplicated across places so one publisher covering a whole coast counts as one. A fishery account is a source describing the fishing; a recorded catch is a report of a specific catch. They are counted apart because they are not the same evidence.

Also associated with this ground

Recorded as present here without a documented method or strength behind them.

Conger eel

Fish documented nearby, not here

Nothing below has been documented at Garron Point itself. Each one has been documented at a named place on the same ground, and the places are listed with it. Treat this as what the water around here holds rather than as a catch list for this mark.

Widely documented on this ground

Documented at three or more neighbouring places, fished a way this place is also fished. That is a pattern about the ground rather than about any one mark, and it is the closest this site comes to saying you will probably meet a fish somewhere nothing has been written about.

From the shore

  • European flounder — documented at Portstewart Strand; The Bann mouth at Castlerock; Ballycastle (+5 more)
  • European sea bass — documented at Portstewart Strand; The Bann mouth at Castlerock; Ballycastle (+3 more)
  • Dab — documented at Ballycastle; Glenarm; Ballygalley (+1 more)
  • Whiting — documented at Portstewart Strand; Glenarm; Ballygalley (+1 more)
  • Turbot — documented at Ballycastle; Ballintoy; White Park Bay

Also documented at neighbouring places

One or two accounts each, on the ground around here. Enough to know the fish is caught in these waters; not enough to say anything about this place.

From the shore

How people fish it

Practised here: Sea fishing, Spearfishing.

Methods the sources name for this ground. Each one is explained in full on its own page.

  • Float fishing

    Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.

  • Spinning

    Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.

  • Ledgering

    Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.

The ground and the water

The ground
A basalt and chalk headland below the Garron plateau where the coast road is squeezed onto a shelf between the cliff and the sea, with a bed of broken boulder and reef offshore that two independent guides describe as among the roughest fishable ground in Northern Ireland. The ledges south of the point, between a ruined pier and a disused quay, are the fished platform.
Exposure
Open from north-east through south-east across the North Channel to the Mull of Kintyre and the Ayrshire coast, with nothing between.
Depth
Deep close in off the point over very broken bed.
Tide and flow
Strong coastal streams accelerating around the point, which is part of why the ground stays as clean and as broken as it is.

Through the year

Two fisheries in one mark and the guides split them by method as much as by month: bottom-fished baits in winter for cod, coalfish, dogfish and huss, and float or spinner through the warmer months for mackerel, wrasse, coalfish and pollack — the summer methods chosen expressly to keep a rig off the seabed.

The months the sources attach to each species here. Where a species carries no season it is listed underneath rather than assumed to run through the year.

The months in which each profiled species is recorded as quarry at this location.
SpeciesJFMAMJJASOND
Pollack — established quarry, recorded in May, June, July, August, September.
Atlantic cod — seasonal, recorded in October, November, December, January, February, March.
Atlantic mackerel — seasonal, recorded in June, July, August, September.
Ballan wrasse — seasonal, recorded in May, June, July, August, September.

Recorded here with no season stated: Bull huss, Saithe, Small-spotted catshark.

Safety

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

Anglers are swept from rock platforms by individual large sets rather than by the average sea, which means the conditions that kill people frequently look survivable for the twenty minutes before they arrive. Wet rock, weed and a swell running onto a sloping platform remove any chance of recovery.

What reduces it: Watch the water for a full set cycle before committing to a position, know the escape route and how long it takes, wear a flotation aid rather than carry one, never fish a platform alone, and treat a rising swell forecast as a reason not to go rather than a reason to be careful.

Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death

UK coastal and inland water is cold enough for most of the year to trigger the involuntary gasp and the loss of swimming ability that decides most immersion deaths, and it does so within the first minute, long before hypothermia is relevant.

What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid rather than carry one, carry a means of calling for help on the person rather than in a bag, and plan on the assumption that an unplanned entry into the water is survivable only if somebody knows immediately.

Moving water and currents — Can cause serious injury or death

Tidal streams past the headlands and through the sounds run faster than a kayak can paddle or a small outboard can push against, producing overfalls and standing waves. A craft that enters the acceleration goes where the water goes, and the mistake is made on the approach.

What reduces it: Treat the tidal stream atlas as the primary document and the wind forecast as secondary. Know when the stream turns at the specific place, do not attempt a sound on springs, plan the return as carefully as the outward passage, and give visible overfalls a wide margin.

Worse when:

  • On spring tides, when the streams run hardest and the overfalls are largest.
  • With wind against the stream, which stands the race into steep breaking water.

Entanglement — Can cause injury needing treatment

The bed here is broken enough that both published guides lead with tackle loss rather than with fish, and a rig held hard on a snag in a swell is the mechanism that pulls an angler off balance on a wet platform.

What reduces it: Fish a rotten-bottom link so the lead parts before the line does, break out with the rod low and the body braced rather than by walking backwards, and treat a mark that costs six traces in an afternoon as a mark to fish on a rising rod rather than a rising sea.

Rules and access

FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Sea angling access in Northern Ireland is governed by landowner permission, harbour and council byelaws, and fisheries and conservation measures, all of which change. Check the current position with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, the harbour or council, and the landowner before going.

Particular to this water: This ground carries conservation designations that constrain access, vehicles, bait collection and disturbance independently of any fishing rule.

Who holds the answer:

  • The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, for sea fisheries and marine conservation in Northern Ireland.
  • The harbour authority or council, for access to the structure or the shore.
  • The Northern Ireland department responsible for agriculture, environment and rural affairs, which administers sea fisheries measures and marine conservation here.
  • The Loughs Agency, the cross-border body administering the Foyle and Carlingford systems, whose licensing arrangements differ from the rest of Northern Ireland.
  • The Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the site management bodies, where a coastal, geological or World Heritage designation affects access or activity.
  • The National Trust or other landowner, where access to the shore crosses land in their ownership.
  • The harbour authority at each port, for access to and fishing from harbour structures.

Nearby fishing

Other publicly documented places within about 40 km, by distance. Positions are approximate public geography and are never exact marks.

Garron PointCarnloughWaterfoot and Red BayGlenarmBallygalleyCushendun and Torr HeadThe Black Arch, LarneBallycastlePortmuck and Browns Bay
Garron Point and the publicly documented places around it. Approximate positions, not marks. On a narrow screen the plot is wider than the screen and scrolls sideways inside its frame. Positions are approximate by design — they are capped at about a hundred metres and describe where a named public place is, not where fish are and not a mark. Everything plotted here is also listed below.

Sources for this place

  • JNCC species and habitat conservation advice — Joint Nature Conservation Committee (Conservation authority)Relied on for: Description, designation and habitat characterisation of the named coastal and marine features of the United Kingdom, and the species characteristically associated with them.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • Cefas science, advice and data on marine and freshwater environments — Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Government fisheries body)Relied on for: Marine environmental science for UK shelf seas: sediment characterisation, estuarine process, shellfish bed distribution, tidal range and the monitoring that describes them.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of British sea angling practice by region, ground type and named mark.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated public descriptions of which places are conventionally fished and how, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship, and not relied on for access, permission or any current rule.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • British Sea Fishing: Northern Ireland shore marks — British Sea Fishing (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: A national shore-mark guide naming this mark, its species, methods, baits and the conditions it fishes in.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • Sea Angling in Ireland: the shore marks of Antrim — Sea Angling Ireland (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: A shore-mark directory describing this mark's ground, species, methods, baits and the walk in.States this directlyPassage read and verified

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-16.

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