April is when the highs win. The winter storms have slackened, the westerlies come through lighter, and the easterly that a clean day needs turns up more often than in any other month. Both published breaks put their best month here: Lahinch at ten clean days out of thirty, Bundoran at twelve. Neither number sounds impressive until you set it against the nineteen and sixteen days those same months lose to wind, and against a swell that is too small on one or two days out of thirty. The ocean is a given here. April is simply when the sky interferes least.
That is where the two answers come from. Ask when Ireland is at its best and you get autumn, which is true if what you want is the most swell and the warmest water of the surfing season. Ask the same question of the figures and you get April, which is true if what you want is the highest proportion of days you can actually use. Autumn gives more surfable days and a smaller share of them clean; spring gives fewer and cleaner.
The cost is the water. April is at 10°C, only just off the winter floor, and it is the last month of the year that still asks for a hood.
