I’m a couple of decades the wrong side of 40, and the appeal of a New Year hangover has definitely waned. I’m hardly alone in that, so I teamed up with another old(ish)-timer and headed over to Etive on New Year’s Day.
We had low expectations of the fishing, so this was really an overnight camp and an excuse to play with matches – with both a hot tent and a campfire on the go.
Ash (a magnificent name for a fireman!) was driving from Northumberland, so I’d a bit of a lie in before he reached Edinburgh. By the time we launched my Longliner and sallied forth from Taynuilt it was nearer lunchtime. Not long ’til dark at this time of year! Given our cluttered state, with camping gear, firewood and allsorts aboard, I headed up the loch to offload basecamp before trying to do any fishing.
My first choice was already taken by a pair of early season canoeists, so we headed over to the east bank. Finding a good spot just above the sandy shoreline, we pitched the tent before heading back out for a shortish session with the rods.
Down to Business (or not!)
My lack of photos probably speaks volumes here – there were certainly spurdog about, but pretty small stuff. We picked up enough to kick off my New Year properly before heading ashore as the light faded. Time to get some food on the go!
I got to play with my Dutch oven again and managed to avoid burning anything too badly. Sitting alongside the fire we simultaneously set the world to rights whilst avoiding a dose of food poisoning. Seems a decent enough way to finish off New Year’s day!
Retiring to the tent we got the stove on the go and followed up with a whisky enhanced hot chocolate.
As a bonus, the skies cleared before we turned in, and gave us a fine view of the stars.
Frozen
When we awoke next morning the sun was clearly losing it’s battle with the clouds, although not without a fight. The block of peat that Ash had left on the stove overnight was still alive (just), so we rekindled some warmth and stumbled out into the daylight.
The scene that greeted us was definitely on the frosty side. Our beach was frozen as well as the little burn alongside our tent. All extremely beautiful but pretty chilly too.
I popped the drone up whilst we got the fire going for a bacon roll and some coffee. The view from above is definitely on the surrealistic side!
The tide was dropping steadily as we took our time with breakfast. Eventually I realised the Longliner was in danger of becoming high and dry on the sand. Oops! Keeping an eye on the freezing water lapping just an inch below the top of my chesties, I shuffled the anchor out a few more feet into deeper water.
Retreating back to the fire to rekindle some feeling in my fingers, I made a mental note to “park” more carefully in future! A reminder too that your chances in the water, even close to shore, are really minimal at this time of year.
Call of Duty!
Breakfast over, we felt we needed to do a little more fishing in order to justify any claim to be anglers. I destroyed any residual feeling in my fingers by hauling in the freezing anchor rope and we headed out once again.
Across the loch ice thickened as we chugged into the bays and ploughed through some decent sized floes. I finally chickened out and reversed course before we stuck fast and became fodder for Etive’s polar bears.
Further down the loch we could see that the forecast rain had arrived – and was working it’s way towards us 🙁
We fished on comfortably for a while in the cold, attracting nothing of consequence. More small spurdogs with a few whiting thrown in to make up the numbers.
Eventually the rain became heavy, freezing and unrelenting so we called a halt and headed back down towards Taynuilt. En route we passed Les and his Seahog Trooper – being circled menacingly by a hungry seal. Finny extortion like this is something I associate with Dunbar, but maybe we weren’t the only creatures struggling to find worthwhile fish in Etive today!
So poor fishing but a great overnight trip in a lovely, lonely place, with great company to boot! Not a bad way to start the year 🙂
Good effort lads despite the lack of fish. Ash is from my neck of the woods – I’m sure I’ve seen that impressive beard of his on the local rock marks before!
It was bloody cold down here over new year so with the added ‘etive chill’ I bet that hot tent was nice and cozy.
Mind the loch looks beautiful for it.
Thanks Liam – we’d a really nice time, even if the fish were a little sub-par. Funnily enough, the tent stove certainly warmed the tent up but didn’t quite manage to roast us. Probably means I was just too stingy with the logs! I was up at Etive again last week with the kayak and the mini-stove, and was getting very toasty despite a wet night in the woods. Unashamed indulgence but absolutely worth it on a long winter’s night!
It certainly sounds the part! Looking forward to the kayak report 😉
Realised when reading that it’ll be 5 years since my last excursion into Etive so going to try and remedy that this spring and get out for a camp before the bugs get too bad.
Hi Liam, Treat it as a fine place to camp with a few fish tagged on and you probably won’t go far wrong. It’s definitely overwhelmed with small fish, with only the odd decent specimen around, but it’s a beautiful place to spend a night or two. If you leave it until April there might even be a small trout or two adding variety along the weedy foreshore.
Cheers,
Doug
Great pics as always, and looks like you had a very similar new year to us, as we were hot tenting at Camasnacroise with similarly poor fishing. We were roasty toasty for 2 nights but packed up before the last night as we’re running low on wood after burning through it faster than planned as it was so cold. My crazy wife went for swim in the morning, so one of us had to sensibly standby for safety…… It wasn’t really a fishing trip though of course a couple of rods found their way into the car. I fished for 4 hours at night, off the rocks right beside where you launched your kayak in the summer, although I needn’t have bothered as I didn’t even get as much as a single bite. I did some exploring on foot though and checked out access to a couple of better looking shore marks, so I’ll probably be back in the spring.
Hi Paul, I’m glad to hear someone else was enjoying a logburner too. It would definitely be a chilly night otherwise, and I always like to watch flames at work as well. There is absolutely zero chance of me voluntarily going for a swim in the winter, so hats off to your other half for giving it go – I’ve seen too many lobster-red survivors stagger onto the beach at Portobello to ever fancy it myself!
Cheers,
Doug