Skye Road trip day 2 (Pollack fest)

Next day we woke early just after 5 am after probably not the best nights sleep. The wind had got up through the night an 18mph from the south  , got showered and brewed a coffee and were on the way to a sheltered sea loch i fished with some success in south westerlies in July. we were on the water by 6:30am , two hours before high water.

We fished the most obvious outcrop first, the tides were spring tides so the water was much higher than usual , and strangely the deepest water off the end wasn't fishing that great , i had the first few fish some small pollack.

 and it wasn't till Brian moved to my inside he got sport as the tide came in until sport almost dried up altogether,

unfortunately Brian's fly line sustained some damage it was the 2nd line in 2 days , the same thing happened to me last month on my family holiday , perhaps a durability issue or maybe just the harsh environment taking its toal?

I got itchy feet and just after high tide decided to head for another part of the mark where "my[cols] rock" is , first two casts two fish the second being a nice one.

Brian noticing the action soon  followed. It was fish after fish for me.

 Brian though found it a bit frustrating trying to get the distance with his damaged fly line and missed out on the best of the sport, though he still managed a good few.

 his smaller fish in the pic below took a orange fly , which turned out to be a great fly, more later.

   We decided at 1:30 to retreat for some coffee. we started to boil the kettle on the stove then it ran out of gas, left the others in the tent , so in the end we decided to head back to the camp via the "fishing shop" and return later for the incoming tide. First though i looked out a line i repaired from my last trip  and we put it on Brian's reel for later .

On our way back to camp we tried to get some mackerel for bait with the intention of putting a couple of rods out early on in the tide , the best we could do was these pieces of fossilised salted mackerel , £1.80 each , looks like the shop keeper saw us coming!

crap bait!

After that we went and looked at another mark but it looked a bit choppy so after a bite to eat and a coffee we were fit to return for 5pm  .

It was a really grotty wet evening and the midges were out in force. We took the bait rods complete with fossilised mackerel, and lobbed them out hoping for a dogfish or perhaps a thornback ray. Meanwhile we pottered about till the tide came in with LRF gear. The odd baby pollack took hold, and i toyed with what i think was a small wrasse till it eventually got fed up with me .

lrf pollack

The bait rods went untouched , it wasn't that surprising really the bait was crap resembling a piece of leather. So i reeled them in with the tide now looking good for a bit fly sport. I headed out to my rock , meanwhile Brian loaded his spinning rod with a sand eel , rigged Texas style but still had the hook on from drop shotting , and he caught a coalfish on the bare hook, he then decided to put on a 2" hto knights lure on that hook, and promptly took a good  pollack  just over 4lb, it appears the pollack there like small lures over large as he went to take a few more , we also  found that  in our fly choice with size 2 clousers being best .

on a pink hto knight worm

Out on the rock i tied on a red fly took a few pollack before hooking a good one he was beat on the surface when the hook popped out, reckon he was about 6lb , never mind .

marooned!

Brian then joined me with the fly rod and was happy with the fly line on the reel , which was getting good distance , and we caught   loads of pollack, the best 6lb for Brian followed by another around 5lb both on his  effective all orange clouser  . In all for our day i reckon we had around 70-80 pollack between us , great sport.

6lb

orange fly does the trick again

Thoroughly contented we headed back to base camp after what had been a long day , not at any speed though as we ushered a herd of cattle along the way  .

The usual beers consumed and then off to our tents for some sleep in preparation for our last day fishing.


 

Skye road trip day 1

Finally our yearly trip away had had arrived After a few weeks of planning .  Brian picked me up at 7 am on the Thursday , we were heading for the Isle of Skye.
 We arrived stopped for a bite to eat on the way  , and arrived at Dunvegan campsite.  We got out tents set up , with a bit of difficulty,  and brewed up a coffee before heading out fishing. As the light easterly wind looked favourable we headed for  Skyes most western point  famous for its fishing and whale watching opportunities called  Neist point.

We  arrived at  the mark  just an hour or so  after low tide, so the plan was to fish it up to high tide , or until it got dark as it was beautiful warm day with the sun shining.

We headed out the front to the rocks to the left of the lighthouse armed with the fly gear . And Brian hooked a coalfish on his first cast.

 It was almost a fish a cast and in almost consecutive casts i completed the grand slam of a coalie,then a mackerel then a small pollack , if i had a bit foresight i would have kept the mackerel for bait , but i was confident we would not struggle to catch them at other marks, i was wrong as it was the only one of the weekend !

Brian finally  managed a decent pollack out the front on his chartreuse/white  clouser but most of the fare was with the coalies and a family group fishing feathers along side us were pulling them in groups of 3 and 4  .

Coalfish

 The minkie whales also put in a show occasionally porpoising at distance, a great sight.

from out the front

For the last hour and nearing high tide, we decided to fish the harbour in Moonen   Bay , here the sport was much better we both got pollock Brian with the best of them going over 4lb.

A stoater!

It had been a good days fishing , difficult at times to locate quality fish particularly out the front  perhaps it was the bright weather ?

After that we took the steep walk  back to the car then returned to the campsite cooked up some sausages  a couple of beers then went to get some sleep for day 2.

 

thats my boy!

With the Mackerel being about in large numbers the weekend before I thought it would be fun for the young lad to have a go, so of we went on Saturday morning hoping that they would still be around in numbers. When we got there the first thing I realised was that i had forgotten my heavier 7-35 gram rod which I had intended to use, so we would be using the wee tronix just to make it more interesting! To begin with I set up with a drop shot rig and a bit of isome  and we got a few nibbles from wee coalies but clearly the macks weren't in like the week before. In a bid to keep Jamie's interest going I switched the column  lead over to a small wedge spoon to see if there were any a bit further out and a few casts later a mackerel was on, I passed the buckled over tronix to Jamie to play the fish, what a laugh!

  another mackerel and a plump coalfish followed before we went to another spot where I was intending to have a go for Mullet.

it was quite windy here and I would have had to have been wearing waders to get into the right position to fish for the mullet, perhaps not the type of fish to go for anyway with the young lad to keep amused. The bread I had didn't go to waste though, Jamie was helping himself to the odd slice as he was now feeling hungry and the aggressive blennie population seemed only to happy to compete over a bit of it too, amusing watching them appear from nowhere to grab hold. A good fun morning and pleasingly Jamie wants to come out fishing again soon.       

    

 

Going Green in Fife

Could not decide what to fish for this evening, but the mackeral was definitely off the list as i  now have enough for bait etc.  . so i checked my ammount of dropshot leads left , and decided i may have enough for a LRF  session.

wrasse corner

I started in "wrasse corner" , but was then joined by another angler , i say angler loosely as he sported a can of budweiser in the other hand , and generally came across as a bit thick.

I couldn't be bothered with him so i moved to a quieter area where i picked up some wee coalfish and tiny pollack on various colours of isome, not least my new purchase green, which i thought may go down well with the local wrasse, as watermelon (green) seems a real popular colour amongst LRF/ HRF anglers for wrasse.

Wrasse corner was vacant again so i gave it some attention, I eventually picked up a Goldsinny followed by a common blenny. But it wasnt exactly great fishing mostly  just the odd coalie pecking away.

I then decided to try the open sea side of the harbour. First chuck another goldsinny.

Another goldsinny

This was followed by more coalfish .

Then i found the sweet spot, and it was wrasse after wrasse , 5 in all a wee under arm lob 20 yards out then tap tap tap then wallop,  nothing  big but they put a great bend in my little tronix rockfish UL  , also had yet another goldsinny thats 6 now in 3 visits, seems to be quite a good head of these wee fellaes in the vicinity.

Red eye

"mmm.. i likes the green isome very much  thankyou please!"

I then ran out of column  weights which i find seems to make drop shotting amongst snags so much easier (less snaggy), so called it a night.   Green isome , dont leave home without it.

mackerel & mullet

We headed down to the popular east Lothian bass mark yesterday with the thought of targeting a few different species, first of all we had a go for the bass with the fly rods, not much happening to be honest so after a couple of hours flogging away without a touch we decided enough was enough and moved to another spot near by. We set up our lrf rods to see what was about, hoping for wrasse I guess, first cast with the drop shot rig and cols wee tronix  buckled over with a hard fighting mackerel, soon I was in on the action too, it was a mackerel every chuck,  a switch over to the fly rods was fun with a few more before we had to move with the incoming tide.    

 after our brief  mackie bash we went back down to the bass mark, but this time to try for another fish on the to do list....  mullet. Once we wangled our way into the hot spot  I introduced some mashed up bread and sardines to try and get them on the feed and  encouragingly it didn't take long for a few to start showing. Hooking them was a different story, we fished with chubber style floats and most of the time we found ourselves striking into thin air, exciting though! I  lost a couple and was beginning to think it wasn't going to be my day when eventually one stuck, not big but I was pleased with my first ever mullet.

  Col was having an equally frustrating time but perseverance finally paid of for him and he got his reward too just before calling it a day, I could see this mullet fishing being quite addictive, don't think it'll be too long before we have another go for them.

Mack- Attack

Returned to the same spot i fished last Thursday on the Forth when i took the LRF gear . Today  i had the fly rod . I fished  1 hour  up to high tide and 2 hrs after , and i think the first hour beyond high water was maybe the best. Not the big boils of mackeral but subtle attacks hear and there . I fished an intermediate with clousers sucessful colours were pink and white , red and white and flash clousers, to be honest i dont think it really mattered , if it was in there path  they would take it .

It wasnt hectic sport but i picked up fish steadily some blind and some cast to surface action. Some of the catch is bound for the smoker and some for bait for the flatties.

An evening on the green burn

 Decided on a visit to the local fertile Little stream. Took a while to get into my stride, pretty rusty , and   perhaps the 6 1/2 ft'er  would have been a better bet tonight instead of the 7 1/2 ft rod with the bankside vegetation breaching the stream, i had to shorten my leader by a couple of feet as the long leader was giving me grief.

Anyway a good  nights fishing, with fish on a mixture of dries and nymphs, the best of the evening though was the last fish in the last pool , i put on a wooly bugger , the choice of fly was decided simply because i lost a good fish in this pool on one a few months back , i reckon this must be it . A poor picture got water on the lense .