fair weather fisherman

I dragged myself out of bed early this morning in order to catch the start of the incoming tide at the  harbour we were fishing last weekend. I felt like crap to be honest and the temptation to stay in bed was so great, but no pain no gain as they say and by 6.30 i was tackling up on the pier with an unrelenting wind hitting my face.

First cast resulted in one of my wee pals taking the lug!

  Nothing after that for a while and the wind was making life difficult, can't say i was enjoying myself,  then a good rattle on the rod tip and i struck into a snag, i managed to pull it free and found myself connected to a lovely wrasse, i was pleased!

   as much as i tried to add to this fish i failed to connect with anything else and threw in the towel at 11.30, fed up with the constant wind and in need of a coffee, a fair weather fisher i guess!

getting our hands dirty again

After reading some great info on codhead bob's site col and i decided to continue our novice sea angling adventures and have a try from a harbour mark in Fife today. But first we headed to a local beach and dug some lug and even managed to find a couple of peeler crabs for our efforts.

We arrived for the tide turning and were soon getting some bites from what we suspected were crabs, then col got the first fish of the day, a sea scorpion !

Col caught another one of these wee fellas  before i had a good rattle on the rod tip and was pleased to find myself attached to my first shore caught wrasse, result!

another nice wrasse followed from the same area and another sea scorpion before we ran out of lug, we thought we had plenty but we'll know to dig more next time! we had some herring left but we didn't have the same confidence in this bait compared to the lug 

it was an enjoyable day in a nice location, looking forward to fishing this harbour again, next time we'll be a bit better prepared  both bait and rig/lead wise.

  

a few days in Orkney

We headed up to Orkney for a few days to visit my mum, the weather up north has been a lot nicer than down here, and it was a lovely evening for the crossing to St Margerets hope, Clyde seemed to enjoy his first ferry journey too.

 Inbetween tidying my mums garden and doing family stuff i concentrated any angling efforts to the sea rather than my usual trout fishing. Not that i did particularly well blanking often than not. First fish was a new one to me, a sea scorpion i think?  on float fished lug from one of the churchill barriers,  can't say i'm in a big hurry to catch another one!

  Had an afternoon fishing a local cliff mark where again the fishing was slow but inbetween loosing loads of tackle i did get a nice coalfish and a Pollack for my efforts, also lost a bigger Pollack which did the usual running into the kelp!

I spent a wee bit of time trying for flounders from some likely looking beaches but failed to register so much as a bite, not even a crab! back to the drawing board there i think.

Only other fish i encountered was when Jamie and i were searching some rock pools, first one is a butterfish i think

not sure what this one is? but it has a face only a mother could love! 

 All to soon our holiday was over, another smooth crossing on the ferry last night with clear sky's and sunshine, it wasn't until we got down to near Edinburgh again that the rain started, back to normal i guess.

Cats and Dogs

 I feel i should be making the most of evening fishing , but on all but a few occasions this season ive felt uninspired to do so, the reason being that it's just been too cold for evening  fly hatches. Well at long last the muggy conditions have arrived, so i left the house at 6pm to fish my local, which was still falling from a big spate , when i left there was light rain i didnt even bother about a jacket. 
as the water was big i put on a large klink and at the shallow head of the first pool i took four fish , the best the first at 1 1/4lb.

Ater that the rain came on and then a monsoon was upon me. I upped the fly size again put on a Longshank Stimulator , and still the fish came, i then tried a bugger but it didn't work and somewhere in the fly change i lost my stimulator so had to rake for another suitable fly, in the end i settled for a big thick winged dirty polly, and it took the bulk of my fish n the evening, eventually the rain subsided but i was soaked through and it was now cold . 

"pollied"

Before calling it a night i checked in on the pond to see if any fish activity , young Keiron had set up for the night after one of the elusive carp. Unfortunately i'd dropped my last wooly bugger so had to use a nymph , perch was the target , and they never let you down as small as they are. After a blether with Keiron, i made it home for 10:15pm.

Floundering Around

It's been probably the best part of twenty years since i last caught a flounder, and wit a new interest in  sea fishing , it seemed a good species to break into this side of the sport. First we had a trip to the tackle shop, we got  some bait,  Frozen lug, herring , peeler crab and a handful of leads.

When we arrived the tide was just on the turn from it's lowest point, it took a fairly big walk to get to where we wanted to start, over mud flats , pretty unpleasant really, but we finally got set up and fishing, the water was very coloured .

Muddy waters

Started off with a wee bit peeler on our two flapper rigs tipped of with a bit lug, and shock horror i got a bite! A flounder mission accomplished!

Success

Thought the fish would just keepon coming but they didnt,fishless hours went by , what did keep coming though was crab after crab robbing our bait.

A nice clean spot

After a while we dicided  to move to more comfortable ground, it was now approaching the top of the tide.
We were now restricted to herring the crabs would strip the bait down to the bone, but eventually it got through to fish, and i picked up another species you might expect at this mark a silver eel.

Brian then managed a fish it came as a bit of a surprise as a crab surfaced taking the top flapper but on the bottom one a "fluke" , again mission accomplished!

I had one more flounder before calling it  a day, really enjoyable day, extremely messy and smelly, but fun, cant wait till next time.

On the Cut

The weathers been terrible still yet to get a proper summer, last weekend it rained, this weekend looks to be the same, and the last two days have been torrential,to the point that most rivers look high and dirty.

 On Wednesday evening i decided to get out after dinner for a couple of hours since there was no football on.
 decided on the canal for the pike, my usual hot spot not did not produce but my back-up was contrastingly good with 4 jacks taking a liking to my pink fly, beats sitting in the house.

A dip in the Sea

Today i had my first sea fishing trip in years, actually thats a lie , i went out in a boat last year , caught some cod and  mackeral , but this was my first shore fishing expedition  .
So it's very much new ground,  and i have so much to learn, so far tackle-wise i have a flounder rod , a reel a few weights hooks enought to build a few simple rigs, so today we initially planned to go for flounder , but at last minute my eldest brother Lindsay and i decided to have a go off his regular patch the cliffs.

I needed a 3oz gripper , and we baited up with lug tipped with mackeral . Lindsay was first into a fish, a 3 bearded rockling.

Then i had a small codling.

A few knock s after that , but the suspects were bait robbing crabs.

We were then treated by a few displays by the dolphins , often clearing the water.Breathtaking sight.

Another hour wore on before the next fish took, another codling , for Lindsay.

Shortly after we called it a day, as my mother was reeling me in for my dinner. But i really enjoyed it, cant wait to do it again, with opportunities to catch wrasse, coalies , pollack mackeral  etc. it's opened up a fresh outlook to my fishing .