It’s been a wee while since I ventured out from St. Andrews, although Ian was reporting some decent fishing between the autumn gales. Conditions looked good as we headed out from the harbour, and better than forecast for a change.
Our initial mark produced plenty of fish, but not really the sort we were looking for. Coley! Piles of them. All the usual small east coast specimens apart from one I kept to feed to skate at some point. Note the titchy pollack in the photo below, as it’s not often that our coalfish are bigger than our pollack!
A shift further out brought us into contact with codling. Nothing very big, but more than I needed to top up the freezer.
We (Ian!) even managed a mackerel, which is good going for the east coast of Scotland in mid-November. Various other moves resulted in more codling but only a handful of small pollack. Easily enough to keep me amused, but perhaps not quite what pollack-mad Ian was hoping for.
Tide times and the early dark at this time of year meant this was destined to be a short trip, and we turned for home not long after the sun finally set over Fife.
I was playing with a new camera and lens, supposedly much more capable for video work in low light. It actually did a pretty good job, as the shot below was taken in near darkness without a flash (you can see Ian had his headtorch on).
After this final half hour fairly close to the harbour we called it quits and hauled anchor. Snaking through the dense pot buoy minefield that surrounds the harbour entrance we made it back into St. Andrews a few minutes later. Perhaps not a red letter day, but good fun nonetheless. Any November day I can still feel my fingers after hours at sea has to be good! 🙂
