THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

Equally creditable was Harry Weatherley fishing with Bill Pashby, who boated fish of 545, 589 and
748 pounds, plus one other smaller fish of unspecified size one morning before breakfast, and while he
was on the boat, which could be for up to three weeks at a time, he lived in a tent on the deck, fearful
of going down below because of sea sickness.
It was also Harry Weatherley, again fishing with the Pashby's aboard 'Courage' who caught the last ever
North Sea tunny on rod and line in 1954.
But that wasn't to be the end of the story. Now calling them blue fin tuna, a small group of Irish
enthusiasts enjoyed a successful if unfortunately rather short lived series of big fish encounters off the
west coast between Westport and Malin Head, in the main fishing out of Downings and Killybegs.
Coincidentally, another story which starts with small bait fish and accidental commercial encounters.
Tuna had quietly been going about their business of running along the Atlantic coast of Ireland on up
around the west then north coast of Scotland probably for thousands of years without anybody really
realising they were there. Then, in the mid 1990's, one of Killybegs pelagic super-trawlers fishing for
herring picked up around a dozen of them which caused quite a stir when landed, but were very soon
forgotten about.
Much of the pelagic fishing in that area at that time was for mackerel from October through to April.
But when an opportunity came along to fish for scad to satisfy a new demand from Japan, the fleet made
the switch, which then required them to fish from August through to November.
This as it would turn out coincided with the tuna running through, though still nobody realised that fact,
until suddenly the pelagic pair trawlers started bringing in a few tuna every night as by-catch, which
they didn't want as they were too big for the pumps used for the scad, and it was this that planted the
seeds of rod and line fishing in the minds of three people – Michael McVeigh, Adrian Molloy and
English ex-pat Alan Glanville.
In effect, the race to catch the first Irish blue fin tuna was
on, though at the time, none of the trio realised this, as they
were independently embarking on the same quest.
To cut an otherwise long story short, Michael McVeigh had
a brand new boat ordered, which he intended to kit out for
the attempt. Through Kevin Linnane and Clive Gammon,
he eventually made contact with commercial rod and line
tuna fisherman Dan Shannon, who while he lived and
worked out of Boston on America's east coast had Irish
roots, and agreed to come over for a few days to show
Michael the ropes when the boat was eventually ready in
September 2000.
Unfortunately, trolling out of Killybegs a few weeks prior
to Dan's visit, Alan Glanville had already done it by boating
a tuna of 353 pounds, followed the next day by an even
bigger fish of 529 pounds. Shortly afterwards, Dan and
Michael went on to boat a tuna on live-bait, at which point
Adrian Molloy picked up the reins by perfecting his trolling
technique, and eventually boating his 968 pound Irish
record fish.
As I've already hinted, that run of fish unfortunately turned
out to be quite short lived, as several years later the boats
Andy Griffith Release, Milford Haven
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