Less than a week into the new year, Ian and I took advantage of a calm spell to venture somewhere new. New to us that is, as it’s a fairly well known mark now, just not one I’ve fished myself. Calm, clear and cold summed it up as we launched my Longliner and headed down loch for a few miles.
We started out slowly, anchored on top of a steep drop over fairly mixed ground. Every slight oscillation of tide changed the sonar reading by 60 or 70 feet. Nevertheless, a few decent thornbacks appeared – just not in huge numbers.
I even managed this baby skate, giving me a gentle introduction to 2024 skating 🙂 Rigs were slightly beefed up sliding ledger gear, with a 6/0 or 7/0 Coz & Rawle Chinu tied to 150lb mono and baited with mackerel.
The weather was pretty kind for the beginning of January with mixed sunshine and showers. I could even feel my fingers whilst admiring this lovely triple rainbow over the loch 🙂
Shifting a couple of hundred metres put us over deeper but flatter territory in around 260 feet. This was definitely more productive and we soon started to bag up on good numbers of thornbacks.
I had another skate, probably in the mid-thirties or so, then Ian followed with a nicer fish of 60lbs.
The thornbacks were still there in quantity with the best of them just into double figures. Our best for a while, so I wasn’t complaining.
Things continued quite happily like this until the sun headed for the horizon. Then, just before I announced game over for the day, Ian prolonged things by hooking another skate.
Clearly our largest fish of the day, although not big by skate standards, this male fish was eventually measured at 101lbs.
We removed a few skate leeches as a small compensation for hauling him aboard, then consigned him back to the cold depths of the loch.
And that was that! A grand start to 2024 with 4 skate and a load of quality thornbacks from a new mark. Definitely happy with that!
Lovely scenic still photo’s, not to mention the fish. Well done both of you.