Clew Bay and Achill

Fishing regions · Last reviewed 2026-08-27

A nursery bay that was once the most famous skate fishery in these islands, an island coast of exceptionally clear water, and the only true fjord in Ireland, within twenty kilometres of each other.

Safety: moving water and currents — can cause serious injury or death. 8 more points apply here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

Being listed here is not permission to fish. What that means

Access, fishing rights, seasons, licences, local bylaws and permitted methods vary and can change. Check current access, permission, local regulations, closures and restrictions before you travel or fish. FishingHQ describes what the ground is and names who holds the answer; it does not hold the answer itself.

Find the authority for a jurisdiction · What FishingHQ does and does not cover

The Mayo coast from Killary Harbour north through Clew Bay to Achill and Corraun is the most varied twenty kilometres of Irish coast FishingHQ holds, and each of its three parts is a different kind of fishing.

CLEW BAY IS A CONSERVATION STORY BEFORE IT IS A FISHERY. It was the most famous common skate ground in Britain and Ireland, that fishery collapsed under commercial pressure at a time when catch and release was not practised, and the population is now described as stabilised and possibly recovering slowly. The bay is a nursery area. The source that documents it opens its own regional guide with that history and with a request that anglers release, rather than with a species list — which is not how angling guides are written, and is the reason it is carried here in the same order. Over forty species are available in the bay.

ACHILL AND CORRAUN ARE ABOUT WATER CLARITY. The summer water off the Corraun headland is clear enough that individual fish can be watched taking a float-fished bait, which changes what the fishing is: mackerel, wrasse, garfish and small pollack on light float gear, with flatfish and the occasional calm-weather ray off the sand patches between the rocks, and sea trout and salmon to small spinners and sandeel. It is competition ground, and it is treeless and windswept in a way that decides when it can be fished at all.

THE CURRENT IS THE MARK, NOT THE GROUND. The clearest description any Irish source gives of fishing an EDGE rather than a piece of bottom is here: a deep natural harbour on Achill where a hard current races either side of high and low water, with the fishing on the edge of that current and pollack to the shore specimen weight following the tide in. Sandeels shoal there in numbers and are taken on small feathers at dusk for fresh bait, which is the other half of the same idea — use what is there.

KILLARY IS IRELAND'S ONLY TRUE FJORD, remarkably deep with a road running along it, giving dab, flounder, pollack and coalfish on the bottom, wrasse on the float through the year and mackerel in season, with sandeel shoaling inshore from May. In summer it is busy with divers and kayakers.

AND THE BIG BEACHES ARE FREQUENTLY STERILE. The local source is candid that the great western storm beaches here look like bass ground and often are not, which contradicts the intuition a visitor arrives with and is exactly the kind of local knowledge a directory exists to carry. A competition on one of them fished six different baits and found that none outperformed any other.

What fishing here is like

Three fisheries in a short distance. A large, sheltered, island-strewn bay that is a nursery ground and the site of a collapsed and slowly recovering common skate fishery, holding over forty species and a great deal of soft ground. An exposed island and headland coast off Achill and Corraun with exceptionally clear summer water, hard tidal currents at its narrows, and a light float and lure fishery that depends on that clarity. And a deep, steep-sided fjord running inland with a road along it, fishable from the bank in conditions that close the outside.

The defining local habit is fishing an edge — the margin of a running current, the lip of a channel — rather than a patch of bottom, and using the bait that is present rather than the bait that was brought.

What you can target here

One entry per fish, grouped by how you would be fishing — because the answer is a different one from the rocks and from a boat. Each entry says how strongly the sources support it and how much evidence sits behind it. This is documented quarry, not a forecast, and none of it is a statement that you may fish any particular ground.

From the shore · 21

Also documented from the shore: Saithe · Bull huss · Dab · Atlantic cod · Brown trout · Garfish · Thick-lipped grey mullet · Thornback ray · Cuckoo wrasse · Edible crab · Lesser sandeel · Turbot · Small-spotted catshark · Atlantic salmon · European plaice

From a boat · 1

PollackRecorded here2 places · 1 recorded catch · 1 sourceKeem Bay, Achill Island, Clew BayOver bayAround AugObserved August 2026

What these strengths mean

Established quarry: Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
Recorded here: At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Occasional: Caught here, and described as unusual rather than normal. Do not plan a session around 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.

How people fish here

7 methods are recorded on the places documented here, counted from the records themselves rather than from what is practised in the country. Each opens a full guide to the technique.

Ledgering
Recorded at 9 places here, over harbour wall, pier, bay, beach.
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.
Documented on the same ground: Atlantic cod, Atlantic mackerel, Ballan wrasse, Brown trout, Bull huss, Conger eel.
Spinning
Recorded at 9 places here, over bay, harbour wall, pier, beach.
Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.
Documented on the same ground: Atlantic cod, Atlantic mackerel, Ballan wrasse, Brown trout, Bull huss, Conger eel.
Float fishing
Recorded at 6 places here, over bay, pier, harbour wall, headland.
Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.
Documented on the same ground: Atlantic cod, Atlantic mackerel, Ballan wrasse, Brown trout, Bull huss, Conger eel.
Kayak fishing
Recorded at 2 places here, over bay, sea loch.
A platform rather than a technique: quiet, shallow-draught access to water no other craft reaches, bought at the price of exposure, and a discipline where the decision not to launch is part of the skill.
Documented on the same ground: Atlantic mackerel, Edible crab, European flounder, European sea bass, Pollack, Thick-lipped grey mullet.
Surfcasting
Recorded at 2 places here, over beach, surf beach.
Casting heavy baited tackle from a beach into surf — a method defined by distance, by tide, and by reading water that all looks the same.
Documented on the same ground: Atlantic mackerel, Dab, European flounder, European sea bass, Turbot, Small-spotted catshark.
Feathering and multi-lure traces
Recorded at 1 place here, over harbour wall.
A string of small lures on droppers, worked in the water column — how most people in Britain and Ireland catch their first sea fish, and the method most likely to catch far more than anybody intended.
Documented on the same ground: Brown trout, Lesser sandeel, Pollack, Saithe, Small-spotted catshark, Conger eel.
Shore diving
Recorded at 1 place here, over bay.
Entering and leaving the water from land under your own power — the most accessible spearfishing and the one where the entry and exit are the dangerous part.
Documented on the same ground: Ballan wrasse, Pollack.

These are the methods documented at the places FishingHQ holds here. A species listed beside a method is documented on the same ground, which is not the same as being taken that way — where a source establishes the method a fish was caught on, it is stated on that place’s own page. All fishing methods.

The fishing year here

The months the records under this area actually name, tightest season first. This is “observed in these months” rather than a season: a species whose months nobody recorded is not listed, because a gap in the evidence is not a year-round fishery.

PollackAugust to August
Ballan wrasseJune to September
GarfishJune to September
Atlantic mackerelMay to September
Atlantic codNovember to March

What dominates

Shore fishing throughout, in three distinct styles. Light float fishing in clear water off the rock for wrasse, mackerel, garfish and small pollack. Lure fishing on the current edges for pollack and on the shallows for sea trout and salmon, with imitation sandeel and small spinners the characteristic terminal tackle. Bottom fishing over soft ground in the bay and the fjord for flatfish, dogfish and conger, and over foul ground at the piers for conger and bull huss. Surf and beach fishing on the storm beaches for flounder, turbot and occasional bass, with the local expectation lower than the beaches look. Small-boat and charter fishing in the bay, where catch and release is asked for.

The water available

A large shallow bay full of drumlin islands, with extensive soft sand and mud, deep channels between the islands and river inflow at its head. An exposed Atlantic island coast of cliff, headland and boulder with sand patches between the rock and exceptionally clear water in settled summer weather. Narrow tidal sounds and a natural deep harbour where the current runs hard either side of the turn. Long high-energy storm beaches with dune behind them. A deep glacial fjord — the only true one in Ireland — with steep sides, a road along one shore and sandeel shoaling inshore from late spring. Piers and tidal harbours, several of which fish only around high water.

How the rules are structured

Sea angling is unlicensed and governed by sizes, bag limits, protected species and area measures. Common skate is a protected species subject to specific measures and the local fishery is explicitly a recovering one, which is why the local source asks for release rather than citing a rule. Bass carries separate national conservation measures. Salmon and sea trout require a state licence, and the rivers running into these bays are assessed annually and may be catch-and-release or closed. Shellfish gathering is governed by classification and biotoxin monitoring, which is directly relevant on this coast's soft ground. Designated sites cover much of the bay, the machair and the dunes. FishingHQ does not state what any current rule is: establish licensing, sizes, bag limits, closed periods and any protected-area constraint with the statutory bodies before fishing.

Who to ask

Inland Fisheries Ireland, for freshwater fisheries, for salmon and sea trout licensing and tagging, and for the sea angling conservation measures it administers.
The government department responsible for the marine, and the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, for sea fisheries measures, minimum sizes, bag limits and protected species.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service, where a designation constrains access, disturbance or collection.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the shellfish classification and biotoxin monitoring programme, before anything filter-feeding is taken.
The harbour authority, local authority, club or landowner controlling the specific structure or shore, whose permission is theirs to give and is not stated here.
The Irish Coast Guard and the RNLI, for safety guidance on this coast.

Words you will meet

Drumlin island: One of the many small rounded glacial hills drowned by the sea in this bay. They are what makes the bay shallow, sheltered and full of channels, and they are the reason it works as a nursery.
Fishing the edge: Working the margin between running water and slack rather than a piece of ground. Where a hard tidal current races past a deeper hole, the fish sit on the seam, and the cast is aimed at the seam rather than at the bottom.
Fjord: A glacially overdeepened sea inlet with a shallow sill at its mouth. Killary is the only one in Ireland, and the practical consequence is depth close to the bank in sheltered water.

Conditions and hazards

The currents are the first hazard and they are not obvious from the bank. At the narrows and at the natural harbour on Achill the tide races either side of high and low water hard enough that the fishing is deliberately timed around it, and the water there does not look as fast as it is.

The outside coast is fully Atlantic-exposed and takes ground swell that arrives without local warning. Corraun and the Achill headlands are treeless and offer no shelter and no cover, so a wind shift is felt immediately and a session ends abruptly.

Tidal access is a recurring feature: a pier road that floods on high springs, a strand that has to be crossed at low water and floods at high, and beaches that shrink to nothing at the top of the tide. Work out the exit before the entrance.

The water is cold enough for cold water shock year round, the coast is remote, and much of the productive fishing is at night or at first light.

Some of what lives here

Fish recorded here that FishingHQ holds a reviewed photograph of. It is not a complete list of what Clew Bay and Achill holds, and it is not a prediction that you will catch any of them — it is a way in to the ones we can show you.

PollackA fast gadoid that hunts up off reefs and wrecks and takes a lure on the drop — and the sea fish most likely to convert a bait angler to lure fishing.
Wilhelm Thomas Fiege — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ballan wrasseA long-lived rocky-ground resident that begins life female and may change sex — and the species that turned rock marks into a lure fishery.
Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
European flounderThe flatfish that runs up rivers — a tolerant, estuarine right-eyed flounder with bony tubercles along its fin bases and a habit of turning up in fresh water.
nbasargin — CC BY, via iNaturalist
Atlantic salmonAn anadromous salmonid that migrates from its natal river to the North Atlantic and returns to spawn — and a species in serious, well-documented decline.
Knepp, Timothy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Places within this area

Publicly documented fishing geography. FishingHQ describes what the ground is; it does not say whether you may fish it, and every one of these sends that question to the body that holds the answer. Browse every place in this part of the world.

Who to ask before fishing any of these

FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Sea angling in Ireland is not generally licensed, but access rights, landowner permission, harbour and local authority rules, conservation designations and national fisheries measures all apply and all change. Check the current position with Inland Fisheries Ireland, the harbour or local authority and the landowner before going.

Keem Bay, Achill Island
Bay · Salt water
A steep-sided sand bay at the western end of Achill Island, enclosed between high ground on both flanks, with clean sand in the bay itself and boulder and reef along the edges under the cliffs.
Open to the west and to full Atlantic swell, and sheltered from almost everything else by the enclosing headlands, which makes it fishable in conditions that shut the open coast.
Particular to this ground: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.
Clew Bay
Bay · Salt water
A wide shallow bay filled with several hundred drowned drumlins — small rounded glacial hills whose tops form low wooded islands — producing a maze of shallow channels, sand and mud flats and sheltered water quite unlike the open Atlantic outside it.
Substantially sheltered by Clare Island and Achill across the mouth, which is why the inner bay is workable in weather that closes the coast.
Particular to this ground: tides and being cut off, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, fishing alone.
Particular to this water: Shellfish harvesting areas are classified for food safety and are opened and closed on monitoring results a gatherer cannot see. Neither cooking nor appearance removes a biotoxin. Check the current classification with the responsible authority before taking anything.
Killary Harbour
Sea loch · Salt water
A long, narrow, steep-sided glacial inlet running some sixteen kilometres inland between mountains, deep for most of its length with a shallow sill near the mouth and soft mud in the sheltered reaches.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.
Particular to this water: Shellfish harvesting areas are classified for food safety and are opened and closed on monitoring results a gatherer cannot see. Neither cooking nor appearance removes a biotoxin. Check the current classification with the responsible authority before taking anything.
Roonagh Pier
Pier · Salt water
The Clare Island ferry pier on the exposed south-western corner of Clew Bay, with a newer outer pier reaching deep water over very foul ground and a sheltered inner pier over cleaner bottom.
Fully open to the Atlantic. The directory says the rocks west of the new pier should only be approached in very calm conditions, and its reason is simply that this is the Atlantic Ocean.
Particular to this ground: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.
Particular to this water: A working ferry pier serving Clare Island and Inishturk. What may be done on it is the operator's decision.
Bertra Strand
Beach · Salt water
A sand spit running north into the southern side of Clew Bay under Croagh Patrick, with a rocky spine along the middle and, at its far end, a deep channel nestled under a ridge of loose stones.
Inside Clew Bay and comparatively sheltered — the directory notes there is never a large surf on this beach even in winter, which is unusual enough on this coast to be the defining fact about it.
Particular to this ground: tides and being cut off, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, fishing alone.
Mulranny
Pier · Salt water
A tidal pier and a long beach on the northern shore of Clew Bay where the Corraun peninsula begins, over sand with a golf-course stream running out across the beach and rough ground off the pier.
Inside Clew Bay, though the directory warns the beach can produce a large surf and that care is needed.
Particular to this ground: tides and being cut off, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, fishing alone.
An Corraun
Headland · Salt water
A windswept treeless peninsula between Clew Bay and Achill Sound, offering rock and shore marks reached by concrete steps at the roadside and flat rocks sliding into the sea under low cliffs. Mixed ground from clean sand to heavy weed and rock, at any state of tide.
Open to Clew Bay and to the weather off the Atlantic, and the directory calls it a tricky spot where localised hot-spots give great fishing in an otherwise barren sea.
Particular to this ground: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.
Particular to this water: Noted shore angling marks that host several competitions each year, reached by concrete steps at the roadside. Where a match is running is a matter for the organisers.
Cloghmore Harbour
Harbour wall · Salt water
A natural harbour at the southern end of Achill Sound with a very deep mark inside it, where a vicious current races through the channel either side of high and low water. The best fishing is on the edge of that current rather than in it.
Inside Achill Sound and sheltered from the open Atlantic, though the jetty itself is very exposed to wind.
Particular to this ground: cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.

2 more places in this area

Purteen Harbour
Harbour wall · Salt water
A small harbour on the exposed southern coast of Achill Island, with rough rock outside the walls, a sand stretch reachable at distance towards the island offshore, and a sheltered inner basin over cleaner ground.
Open to the Atlantic outside the walls. The directory says the outer rocks are extremely dangerous in large swell and asks that they be avoided in those conditions.
Particular to this ground: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.
Keel Strand
Surf beach · Salt water
A long Atlantic surf beach on the southern side of Achill Island, running east from Keel village to the cliffs and the cathedral rocks at its far end. Clean sand throughout with the best ground at the cliff end.
Fully open to the Atlantic on the southern face of Achill.
Particular to this ground: cold water shock.
Severe hazards of Clew Bay and Achill apply here: moving water and currents, cliffs and rock platforms, tides and being cut off, fishing alone.

Safety

Moving water and currents — Can cause serious injury or death

Narrow sounds, estuary mouths, harbour entrances and channel edges run hard on the tide, and the water moving through them is a whole bay emptying and filling through a gap. Somebody who enters that water is carried, not swum, and shingle and sandbanks shift under the current.

What reduces it: Treat the state of the tide as part of the mark rather than as a timing detail. Do not wade a channel edge. Stay off shifting banks on a making tide.

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

Long-period ground swell generated by storms in the open North Atlantic arrives with its energy intact and independently of local wind, so a rock platform can be taking sets that arrive without warning under a blue sky and a flat forecast. The marks with deep water close in are the most attractive and the most exposed, and this is how people are swept off this coast.

What reduces it: Read the swell forecast — period as well as height — rather than the wind forecast. Watch any platform through several full set cycles before committing to it, and pick a position you could leave immediately. Deciding not to fish a mark is routine here rather than cautious.

Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death

The water is cold enough to trigger the involuntary gasp and hyperventilation of cold water shock for most of the year, which incapacitates a swimmer in the first minute regardless of how well they swim, and it does not stop being cold in a warm summer week.

What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid so the first minute does not have to be survived by swimming. Fish with somebody. Know where you would get out before you need to.

Tides and being cut off — Can cause serious injury or death

Tidal islands, causeways, strand crossings and rock gullies that are dry ground at low water flood on the tide, and the water arrives behind the angler rather than in front of them. The Irish west and south coasts carry a large number of these and several are the ordinary way onto a mark.

What reduces it: Work out the tide for the day before walking out, and work out the exit rather than the entrance. Set an alarm for the turn. Never assume a crossing that was dry on the way out will be dry on the way back.

Fishing alone — Can cause serious injury or death

Much of this coast is remote, has no mobile coverage and is a long way from help, so an ordinary injury — a turned ankle on broken rock, a fall on a wet slope — becomes a serious problem because nobody is coming and nobody knows where to look.

What reduces it: Tell somebody the mark and the return time. Carry a means of calling for help that does not assume mobile coverage. Do not fish exposed rock alone.

Precautions that always apply here

Wear a buoyancy aid or lifejacket. Cold water incapacitates strong swimmers within a minute, long before swimming ability matters.
Check the tide before you go and know your exit route. Being cut off is the commonest way a shore session becomes a rescue.
Tell somebody where you are going and when you expect to be back.
Carry a charged phone in a waterproof case, or another means of calling for help.

Further safety reading

Tides and being cut off — Tidal access is a recurring feature of this coast: a pier road that floods on high springs, a strand crossed at low water that floods at high, and beaches that shrink to nothing at the top of the tide.

Check the rules before you fish

Fishing laws, bylaws, access rules, seasons, bait restrictions and permitted methods vary by location and can change. Check the current rules from the relevant authority and the water you intend to fish before fishing.

Check with:

Current national or regional law for where you are fishing
Current local bylaws
The relevant fisheries authority
The landowner, club or fishery whose water it is
Any restrictions specific to the species or the method you intend to use

Where to go next

What swims here

Local knowledge

Currents, eddies and where fish holdThe characteristic local method here is fishing the EDGE of a running current rather than a piece of bottom. At the narrows the tide races either side of high and low water hard enough that the fishing is deliberately timed around it, and the fish hold on the seam between moving and slack water.

Sources and evidence

Sea Angling in Ireland: the shore marks of Mayo — Sea Angling Ireland (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: A practitioner shore directory's account of the Mayo coast from Killary Harbour to Killala Bay: the ground, the species, the methods, the tide windows and the character of the fishing, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyPassage read and verified
Sea Angling in Ireland: the shore marks of Achill and Corraun — Sea Angling Ireland (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: A practitioner shore directory's account of the Achill, Corraun and Mullet peninsula marks: the ground, the species, the methods, the tide windows and the character of the fishing, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyPassage read and verified
The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat association and biology of the fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe named as characteristic of this coast.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Why the 8 connections on this page are here, and the sources

What swims here

Backed by research — 5 connections

Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.

Atlantic salmon
A claim that a coast contains the ground and conditions the species is associated with. It is a distributional statement about the world, it rests on the regional reference literature, and it deliberately asserts nothing about access, permission or catch.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution and habitat association of the marine and estuarine fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe, including which coasts and ground types a species occupies.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded distribution, depth range and habitat association for the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Ballan wrasse
A claim that a coast contains the ground and conditions the species is associated with. It is a distributional statement about the world, it rests on the regional reference literature, and it deliberately asserts nothing about access, permission or catch.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution and habitat association of the marine and estuarine fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe, including which coasts and ground types a species occupies.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded distribution, depth range and habitat association for the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified
European flounder
A claim that a coast contains the ground and conditions the species is associated with. It is a distributional statement about the world, it rests on the regional reference literature, and it deliberately asserts nothing about access, permission or catch.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution and habitat association of the marine and estuarine fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe, including which coasts and ground types a species occupies.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded distribution, depth range and habitat association for the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Flapper skate
A claim that a coast contains the ground and conditions the species is associated with. It is a distributional statement about the world, it rests on the regional reference literature, and it deliberately asserts nothing about access, permission or catch.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution and habitat association of the marine and estuarine fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe, including which coasts and ground types a species occupies.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded distribution, depth range and habitat association for the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Pollack
A claim that a coast contains the ground and conditions the species is associated with. It is a distributional statement about the world, it rests on the regional reference literature, and it deliberately asserts nothing about access, permission or catch.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution and habitat association of the marine and estuarine fishes of the British Isles and north-west Europe, including which coasts and ground types a species occupies.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded distribution, depth range and habitat association for the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified

How people fish here

What experienced anglers do — 1 connection

Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.

Sea fishing
A statement about which branch of angling dominates on a coast. It is consensus about practice rather than a fact about the world, and it is carried at that level.
- Inland Fisheries Ireland regional sea angling guides — Inland Fisheries Ireland, 2013 (Government fisheries body)Relied on for: The Irish statutory fisheries body's own sea angling guides, describing the marks of each coast with the species taken and the state of the tide.Background and mechanism onlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice and local fishing character for these coasts, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Local knowledge

Backed by research — 1 connection

Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.

Currents, eddies and where fish hold
A link from a coast to the physical mechanism that governs its fishing, which is a claim about coastal process or hydrography rather than about angling.
- ICES Advice on fishing opportunities, catch and effort — International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Ecoregion description, stock distribution and the hydrography of the sea areas named, including seasonal inshore movement.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 north-west European shelf seas, including sediment character, coastal process and inshore monitoring.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Safety reading

Official guidance — 1 connection

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

Tides and being cut off
A statement that a coast presents a particular hazard, resting on water-safety guidance issued by bodies with responsibility for it rather than on angling practice.
- RNLI water safety guidance: cold water shock and Float to Live — Royal National Lifeboat Institution (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Cold water shock, immersion response, tidal cut-off and water-safety guidance for shore anglers and small-craft users.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- Rock fishing safety and the declared lifejacket areas of New South Wales — NSW Department of Primary Industries and Surf Life Saving NSW (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Rock-platform hazards, the mechanism by which anglers are swept, and the measures that address it.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.

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