A day in the Sound of Mull

Vagabond · #1 06-22-2007, 03:43 PM

Species Hunt 2007 Nos 22 to 24

One of the highlights of our angling year is a day out with Davy on his boat Catchalot. Enjoyable company, and the fishing can vary from pretty good to superb.

Got to the pier early and had a cast or two with a shrimp rig. Last August there were swarms of tiny cod in many places up and down the West Coast. We were too early this year though, only baby pollack around –

I had a full string second cast – a useful insurance (point-wise) against not finding any large ones from the boat. But these tiddlers were too small even for bait, so back they went.

Rods were loaded into the boat, and we set off to get some bait at a deep mark near the shore
Mackerel – in large numbers – were present, and a few full strings soon provided us with enough bait for the day.

It was Certhia’s turn to go for the big stuff, and she will tell her own story in due course.

Our first move was to fish with whole mackerel, and we kept getting bites from something hungry down there. Baits were coming up either badly mangled, or missing. I tried striking at the first nibble, and up came the bait with this result.

Well, we now knew two things – what had made the bite, and how big its mouth was!

So down went a piece of mackerel of suitable size for a good mouthful, and up came

..this spurdog.

Not to be outdone, Davy promptly caught a bigger one.

The day had to be cut short, as Davy had to be back in Glasgow that night, but not before we had our traditional barbeque beside the loch.

We had the usual game sausages – wild boar, venison – we had pigeon burgers last year. This year we acquired some live scallops that one of Davy’s mates had dredged up that day – delicious when lightly grilled on the barbie.

We finished off our banquet with fresh Scottish strawberries dipped in molten Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate – absolute decadence!