Weather: Force 6-7 SE wind and overcast – chilly
Sea Conditions: SE or ESE waves around 10-12 feet – water a filthy brown colour
Time: Roughly 07:15 through 14:45 – about 7.5 hours
Tides: LW at 08:22 – large tide.
First time up in Aberdeen for about a year, but I couldn’t let the winter pass by without at least one trip to the rock marks in search of codling. As I was hoping the sea was pretty rough after days of gales, which usually brings in fish eager to hoover up worms and crabs turned up by the waves. It was still dark as I shivered my way into my Fladden floatie suit and rock boots before making my way down towards the Flat Stone mark near Downies Farm.
My bait of choice was lugworm and a few minutes later I lobbed a couple of rigs out as far as I could into the teeth of the wind and settled down to wait. The sea was quite large but the main problem was the strong wind which made it difficult to spot bites and was really blasting past at times – nonetheless there was a reasonable stream of bites in the first few hours and 4 smallish codling were landed, with a couple more lip hooked specimens falling off as they were lifted up the cliff. Things then went quiet and I decided on a move down towards the Red Rock, partly to get a little shelter from the wind and also ‘cos the sea was slightly rougher and more easterly in direction than before and there was more spray around than before.
I’d hoped to get on the high mark at Red Rock but this was already occupied, and it’s not really a spot for sharing, so I stopped off at the Furnace Rooms (or Furnished Rooms – depends who you listen to). In the conditions this mark was a little marginal, with heavy seas coming in rather close to the rocky casting platform and the occasional heavy lump of water crashing over the top of the rocks behind, so I cast out and then retreated a little up the rock for additional safety. The final ninety minutes produced another couple of codling, to just under 4lbs, before I called it a day.
A grand total of 6 codling for the session, which isn’t too bad for this late in the season but I was somewhat underwhelmed by their size.
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