I spent a fine few hours afloat on Etive last Sunday, reminding my little Orkney what water feels like. Only her second outing since last December, so I was relieved that everything still worked! Just a lazy summer day out rather than serious fishing, but great fun nevertheless.
It was just after LW and there were only inches of water available when I dropped the boat in at Kelly’s Pier. I drifted the narrows at Bonawe briefly, in search of mackerel and then just headed up into the mountains.
Spurdog number one came aboard after half an hour or so, but it was small. Also friendless! I gave it a little while then upped anchor and moved a few hundred yards. Not quite instant success but I didn’t have to wait long before a succession of females queued up to say hello. Nothing very big unfortunately!
After tangling rods and losing both sets of gear due to bite-offs, I fell back to a single rod. Even so, action was almost constant so there were plenty of fish about. Something like 16 or 17 in maybe 90 minutes, plus a couple of little whiting.
By now I’d my fill of the spurs, so went exploring a little. In the past I’ve had loads of small codling and other fish drifting fairly close inshore, so I gave it a try. The wind was rising a bit and there was a decent drift, so I covered the ground all right. Unfortunately the fish weren’t too impressed and I only managed a little mackerel.
Plan number three was to have a good look for that rare combination of decent campsite and decent looking shore mark. I sussed a couple of spots last year but wanted to run the sonar over them before I wasted too much time trekking in. A nice flat campsite often means a shallow seabed too!
I stuck on a rather large 20g toby and started a slow trundle along the shoreline. The toby was the best I could do as I managed to forget my small lures and the trout didn’t seem put off. I managed three, and missed a few more strikes. All small fish in the 6-12oz range, but a novelty nonetheless.
Good fun, and definitely lazy style fishing.
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