Today was our first day in  ireland for our annual holiday to bellavista, cobh county cork. We arrived and after sorting some shopping and a decent breakfast at the hotel we went for a drive. We knew roughly where we were heading but wernt following any particular route. We ended up in garryvoe to start with, there’s a big sand beach with a few bits of rock ect and lots of parking but it wasn’t what we were looking for so we moved on. Next we headed to ballycotton, this is a nice little fishing village on the headland at the end of the sandy bay to the west of garryvoe. We had a nose around the harbour where several commercial boats of various sizes are moored along with ballycotton lifeboat. Obviously we couldn’t help but gaze into the clear waters below which it turned out were rammed with sprats as far as the eye could see today. I didn’t have any hooks small enough to catch these but I could hear a water outfall on the other side of the breakwater so I grabbed some ragworm and a rod to find out what was under it. I had three drops down and had 3 different fish (all small) a Pollock, a coalfish and a wrasse. Im sure we could have found some more fish here but Stacey let the pack of rag worm blow over the side of the breakwater. Besides the beach was calling as we were missing the best part of the tide.  We headed west and pulled into a couple of coves with rocks ect in them. Im sure these fish at times but im not sure I fancied fishing them in todays conditions as I think we would have lost a lot of tackle. The first beach we came across that was fishable was ballycroneen which we had fished before a couple of times. The tide was well on its way up by now but on the plus side weed was minimal. We fired out a couple of paternosters with mersea island lug worm into the surf. The first cast resulted in a couple of bites and the next couple of cast resulted in a cracking flounder on staceys new rod and a little bass for me.  We had another few casts here but with no joy as the tide pushed us further and further up the beach. Uncle steve had now caught up with us and joined us for the last little while on the beach before we headed back for dinner.