Ballachulish looked pretty dismal when I arrived just before nine, with low, dark cloud and a bitter wind driving light rain across my windscreen. Not exactly perfect conditions to be out in a little inflatable…
I headed up the loch to see if conditions were any better inland and was rewarded by a lighter breeze and no rain. Once the Avon was launched I set up with mini-feathers and mackerel bait and had a go at some mini species, just to get the year underway.
First drop rewarded me with a tiny codling, followed by a succession of poorcod until I got bored catching fish the size of a baby goldfish. By now the wind had strengthened again and was blowing along the loch, making it very hard to fish effectively even when using the outboard to slow the drift down, so I took a break and collected some mussels for dinner from the rocks at the bottom of a cliff face.
Mission accomplished I fished a set of hokkais for a good while, catching reasonable numbers of codling with the best going around 2.5lbs.
I’d been seeing numbers of fish midwater on the sonar so I had a final couple of drifts to try and identify them for sure – and duly picked up a number of small coalies to add another species for the year.
By now the wind was a force 3 gusting 4 and it was getting very cold on the floatie boatie, so I chucked it a bit earlier than planned and was packed up and on my way home before sunset.
