It’s taken almost a month to getting around to post this little report, which probably says it all! Who’d be an angler in Scotland. Four days of wind and a fair bit of rain 🙁 Still, we caught a few fish, had a few beers, and even the tent survived unscathed.
The forecast was pretty much right, with mainly a force 5-6 S/SW wind, which leaves most of the area unfishable from a boat. Even shore fishing is hard going.
Thursday afternoon saw Ian and I hammering in what felt like 100 tent pegs as we put up a cavernous old family tent at Port William. At least base camp looked and felt fairly spacious – even if I wasn’t entirely confident it would actually still be there in the morning.
We followed up with a couple of hours catching weed at Luce Bay, together with a stray coalie and flounder.
Snatching a few hours afloat
However Friday offered the prospect of lighter winds, so Ian and I took the chance to get out before things got worse again, and headed out from Garlieston. A little bouncy in Wigtown Bay but not too bad, and we were able to fish OK.
We’d only frozen mackerel but otherwise had plenty of crab and some squid, however the fish weren’t too keen to play and we only had a handful of smoothhound showing interest.
Ian had several decent rays but there was no sign of tope, whilst we had rather too many doggies and a few dabs.
We headed back to Garlieston around half-three, to catch the slip before the tide ebbed too far, and passed Trevor catching a few crabs at the pier head as he waited for us to come in.
Boat recovery and greetings over with, we spent a little while collecting some lug to augment bait supplies before munching a variety of chippie suppers in the early evening sunshine.
Bass and Eels
Morale somewhat restored it was off round to Carsluith for an evening fish at a more sheltered spot. This worked out pretty well, with good numbers of flounder, an eel or two and a couple of bass for me.
A fairly manky and muddy venue, but it did churn out the flounders and eels (mainly for Ian, who didn’t receive much sympathy), as well as bass and plenty more weed.
The wind was pretty horrible on Saturday so it was back to Carsluith for a few hours. Between fishing Luce Bay and Carsluith I ended up with a good number of flounders, three bass (and a fourth that fell off at the side), and a solitary eel and coalie. The bass were a definite plus for me as I’ve hardly ever caught them from the shore before and although the best probably didn’t make 3lbs, it’s still a PB for me.
Sunday proved more of the same, weatherwise, so we called it quits and reverse engineered the tent back into the car before trundling off home. So, one good day out of four from a fishing point of view, but I suppose we were spoiled by the last couple of years when sunstroke looked a real possibility!
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