I hastened along the trail, mindful that darkness would fall before I reached my preferred spot. This was a last minute effort, and I faced a good 2 hours hike down the loch. Bearing in mind that some spots are a little hairy in daylight let alone at night, I was keen to minimise stumbling around!
Dusk
Arriving just as the last glimmer of light left the sky, I happily dumped my heavy backpack. I quickly collected some dead wood to augment the limited supply I’d carried in. Perhaps not the best quality, but good enough for my purposes tonight. With the basics satisfied it was time to get the fishing up and running!
I cast out a mackerel baited pulley rig on both rods and then sorted out my kit and set up the tent. Recent storms had washed over the site and deposited plenty of seaweed, so I shifted enough out the way to get a decent space for my little tent.
Checking the rods after this I saw that both had been stripped. Not so good, as this usually means crabs are about. A quick rebait and recast and I started work to get the fire going, as no fire means no food (and no coffee!). Maybe 15 minutes later however, I heard the noise of a ratchet indicating something was interested in the mackerel. The something turned out to be a small spurdog, welcome enough as a start to the year.
With the fire burning nicely now I got dinner on the go – chilli chicken and pasta, and plenty of it to combat the winter night. There was no-one else about at all, and the loch was completely dark, calm and silent. I drank a whisky fortified coffee and contemplated my surroundings as I waited on dinner.
Spurdog
My peace (and dinner) was interrupted by the sound of the ratchet on the reel as something made off with the bait. Striking into the fish I realised immediately that this was a much better beast than the usual small stuff. Not that spurdog fight much, but this was clearly a nice fish. It was a relieved angler who spotted the green reflection of its eyes in my headtorch and guided it gently to shore.
I scrambled down onto the rocks and manoeuvered a chunky female spurdog onto the seaweed. A quick measure showed it to be between 107 and 108cm in length and easily my biggest from the shore. Indeed, it’s my best from either boat or shore for several years. Weight for length scales suggest something around the 12lb mark 🙂
Checking my dinner to make sure it hadn’t burned to a crisp whilst I dealt with madame spurdog, I recast the bait. Finally, I settled down to eat – I was starving by now, not having had anything since early morning.
I fished on for a couple more hours, landing another three small spurries, before calling it a night and curling up in my sleeping bag. I couldn’t hang around too long in the morning, so the idea was to start fishing just before dawn and give it a couple of hours whilst having a lazy breakfast.
Dawn
Up before seven, and it was definitely on the cold and damp side. A decent night’s sleep helps, but it was chilly as I hurried to get baits in the water and then coax my campfire back into life.
Happily, this didn’t take too long and I soon had a morale boosting source of warmth as I waited for water to boil. My coffee was ready just as dawn broke over a flat calm loch, with the moon still shining in the sky.
A couple more spurdog put in an appearance as the sun threatened to rise above the mountains. Munching on bacon and eggs, coffee in hand, fish about, and with a view like this – winter perfection!
Unfortunately this was a rather curtailed little trip and I had the tent packed and camp cleaned up not long after sunrise. I’d lost a fair bit of weight from my rucksack which certainly helps, and there was a cracking view of the mountains as I headed back. It’s still a long haul though!
And 2019 stutters to a halt
I feel I should provide a brief finale to 2019. A couple of nice days out but the catching was crap, and I always struggle to get the motivation to write about poor fishing.
St Andrews provided Ian with a decent pollack and a couple of codling on a very cold December day. I just acted as bystander, adding a solitary coalfish to the mix (and a small one at that).
A week or so later I met up with Trevor for the first time in months. After some to-ing and fro-ing over where to fish we settled on Arbroath as the least worst option. If nothing else it’s about equidistant for us, and the forecast did suggest a decent swell.
To be fair the swell wasn’t too bad and I thought we’d be in with a shout of codling in the murky water. I think we had three between us, but the specimen Trev’s holding was typical. At least we finished the year with a lovely sunset, but I think we’d really both have preferred a plump codling or two!
