Rough in more ways than one… I was lined up to drive my M-I-L back to Aberdeen from Edinburgh after spending Christmas with us, so thought I may as well get a bit of shore fishing in as well, given that the weather looked suitably awful. Duty done, I hit the cliffs around 2 in the afternoon to find a very large sea running.
It was clear that most of the marks would be suicide to fish from so I headed for the Red Rock, hoping to find the Furnished Rooms still fishable and with the top of Red Rock as a fallback. A few minutes at the Furnished Rooms and it was clear that things were a bit too lively here and were only likely to get worse as the flood tide picked up against a hefty southerly swell, so I moved back to my “last resort” mark of Red Rock. Here things were pretty comfortable and well sheltered from a wind that had back to the SW so I managed to fish without difficulty.
I fished roughly 2 – 9 p.m. for a total of 3 little codling, plus 1 about 4lb lost coming up the cliff and another much larger one (at least 8lb, probably more) that I just couldn’t lift out the water at all. I was up on top of the Red Rock, so I knew there was no chance with the bigger fish, but I was annoyed about the 4lber as it was my own fault in letting the line go across a rock 🙁 Everything came to plain old lug baits, although I did try mackerel for a while on one rod.
There was nothing at all for the first 4 1/2 hours, and baits came back untouched or got rolled into rocks by the sea, then I lost the bigger fish. All the other fish came between 7 and 8 p.m. and were stuffed with lugworm, so it was pretty concentrated fish-wise. Overall a pretty disappointing session as I’d hoped for better, but it was a nice afternoon/evening to be out – quite mild and well sheltered from the wind so not really a hardship to be out wave watching rather than catching.
Some of the seas were huge, and the top of Red Rock was one of the only places you’d have been safe. Another angler came down to the Furnished Rooms and was standing right on top of it when a wave just lipped over his feet – if he’d been down on the bit that people normally fish he’d have been washed off. He came round to see me afterwards to see if anything was doing (it wasn’t at that time) and then headed off to Nigg Bay. I’d expected it to be rough, but it was worse than I thought, especially when the flood tide kicked in.
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