The best day on the Lough so far was last Thursday! Sara needed some bait for her crab pots, so Luke and I went fishing for some mackerel outside the reserve past Barlow Creek. Boating into the open ocean requires a bit of planning: you can only take the rib over the rapids an hour before the tide is changing high to low and for two hours after this time. Otherwise the boat will not make it over the rapids! Luckily, we made it out to sea with no effort at all. The weather was not ideal for a fishing trip, it was raining and very windy! I had a grand total of 5 jackets on and my body looked like a marshmallow! As we entered the open sea outside of the marine reserve, the waves were getting larger and the boat was rocking back and forth. It was hard to hold the fishing pole steady while trying not to fall off the boat. We used the fish finder to help spot some mackerel. We each pulled up about 3, and then the red blotch on the fish finder screen disappeared so we tried a new location. This process continued and before we knew it, we were only minutes away from the tide being too strong to get back into the Lough. Unfortunately (or fortunately) right as we were about to turn the boat back around, the fish finder showed a dense red ball indicating that we were on top of a large school of mackerel! We dropped our lines and started pulling up fish again and again!!!! In total we caught 29 mackerel!! The next day for dinner, I made deviled mackerel with a recipe Luke provided with the leftover fish that Sara did not need for her crab traps. The fishing paid off, Sara caught more than a dozen crabs (and 2 sharks!) and we got a delicious fresh mackerel dinner!