After my dire showing at the end of December I thought I’d give Aberdeen a second try, with my first outing of 2016. Gales and heavy seas (and flooding) have been pretty much continuous for the last couple of weeks but it looked like the worst of the seas had dropped back enough to make some of the marks fishable.
Pre-dawn found me sploshing my way along to the Flat Stone through some quite deep water on the cliff paths – the worst I’ve seen along here for years and it showed the amount of rain that had fallen recently.
The sand lining the bottom of the rock pools was evidence of the pounding received by the waves as the water here is around 35 feet deep and it takes quite a wave to really get the bottom disturbed.
Light was creeping across the sky as I popped out a pair of rods – one with mackerel and another with lug and mussel, and then sorted out the obligatory coffee. And then another, and another. Still no bites.
Two hours went by before I got a slack liner on the mackerel bait and managed to scrape a nice looking 4 1/2 lb codling up the side of the rocks without losing it to the swell pounding the rocks. This one was full of lugworm, probably shaken loose by the recent storms.
I stayed on the Flat Stone for a while longer but by now the seas were running a little too close for comfort so I decided on a move to the Square Stone, just up the coast.
A couple of fishless hours later I even got forced off the Stone as towards HW water started washing over the bit I’m standing on the photo below. The swell appeared to build steadily from the ENE during the day although the wind stayed light, so probably a combination of the flood tide and something brewing offshore, but the Flat Stone was lethal by this stage.
A traipse back towards Red Rock saw me finish off with another 90 minutes on the high mark there – complete with seaweed washed up 70 feet or so above the sea, so it must have been quite a storm at its height. However nothing doing so I admitted defeat and packed up for the drive home.
Not exactly a sparkling start to the year but at least a blank was avoided and the freezer is no longer completely bare.
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