Newfoundout Kilkee

Now that the boat is out of commission (temporarily) it seems that the shore dive is the new thing. Last week, even before the boat started driving round in circles, myself and Roger threw our camping gear in the boot and headed down to Kilkee.  Friday evening a week ago was our first attempt at Newfoundout, or Newfee for short.  I wasn't expecting much to be honest since it was low tide and we would only get around 8 meters. We were so surprised by the amount of fish we encountered we headed back to Newfee 3 times since.

On different visits we were joined by Matt and Ken and also Magic and Frank. Each time, we parked up near Richard Harris' old house, The Billows, kitted up and walked down carefully.  Whenever it was high tide we were always competing with the legions of youth braving the diving boards.  They seemed to hardly notice us, or maybe they were afraid we might try to steal their place in line.  I was impressed with their bravery in front of the girls.  They seem to start at the lowest board, moving up to the higher one and eventually to the ground just above the top board. But the real action was up on the wall next to the road.  As we kitted up we could hear the young ladies coaxing the fellas to go for it.

Once we jumped off the rocks, we headed out northwest over the kelp and picked up the reef quite quickly. We stayed along the reef for the entire dive and were rewarded with all sorts.  On almost every dive we saw Blennys, some decent size plaice a couple lobsters believe it or not!  There were several schools of small fish that escorted us around the crescent shaped reef. We were visited by some silvery blue schools that looked a like eels. Silvers sprats im told. Plenty of pollack and wrasse and even a couple mackerel for a brief moment, surely there for the sprats.  When we started concentrating we found ourselves poking under every rock with a small torch and we found a shrimp or too. We knew then we would surely find a conger - sure enough we did!  I came across a small flat round fish quite by accident. It was hanging off the side of a rock, perfectly round and exactly the color of the rock. I thought how rare! But I was disappointed when Roger saw another at the very next rock, an angler fish.

We truly enjoyed our dives in Newfee and were hungry for some new locations.  Several times that weekend we were visited by Ronnie. He gave us a great tour of a few of his old haunts. On Saturday between dives he ran us up to Black Rock. When I say Ronnie ran I mean it; I could hardly keep up as he scrambled over the rocks to look for the steps down.  Later, when we attempted it in the evening we found huge waves crashing in at high tide, so we will leave that one for another day. Hopefully the weather will give us a chance this summer to attempt Doctors Rock at low tide or Myles Creek.  Keep an eye out for the texts as Im not gonna let a broken boat stop me.