As usual, winter weather confined me to the inner sea lochs for the first few months of 2024. Nonetheless, I managed a couple of trips, launching at Leven and heading out into Loch Linnhe targetting more skates and rays.
February
This was a solo trip which was close to a rerun of my day out with Ian a month previously. There’s a link to the video below, but suffice it to say that I’d a load of thornbacks to low double figures and several small skate.
Man Overboard
Well, not exactly 🙂 However, my next excursion in March featured both a minor disaster and a minor miracle.
This time I’d Trev for company and we hit the same mark as previously, roughly 250 feet deep and near a fish farm. Fishing was for yet more skates and rays, with a slim chance of something more interesting.
Pickings were a little slimmer than my previous session but still quite respectable with both thornbacks and skate featuring.
Disaster struck as I weighed a small skate in the landing net. With our attention distracted, another skate attacked a bait and managed to drag rod and reel over the side before we could grab it. In water over 250 feet deep and with a decent tide running, I reckoned I wouldn’t be seeing the gear again!
Miracles do happen!
We fished on regardless until maybe an hour later Trev hit another skate and started to haul it towards the daylight. This fish was quite visible on sonar as it edged towards the surface. However, when it was still 50 feet down I noticed another echo rising off the sea bed, one matching the movement of our skate. With hope rekindled Trev pulled the fish gently to the boat – where I noticed braided line tangled across it’s tail spines.
Carefully removing the braid I started to pull the line, whilst Trev returned the skate safely to the water. A few minutes later and our miracle arrived – rod, reel and terminal gear, all very salty but retrieved safely. Trev’s skate hadn’t actually taken the bait, but had simply caught the braid as it swam along. In the circumstances we were doubly lucky to get everything back!
Highlight of the day over, we carried on a while longer but failed to get much more excitement before the time came to haul anchor and head back to Ballachulish.
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