Hand Lines

Image above: Homemade Hand Line

A little while ago we spent a few days in Wales trying to look for a future. We stayed with couple who were friends of a friend in a converted barn. As a thank you present I got together a hand line as the guy had said he had a small boat but he didn`t go fishing. The hand line handle I routed out of oak and used an old cork place mat to create a hook hold while it is being stored. The feather rig I tied from holographic curling ribbon and the weight is one I cast in the small video I made (see earlier post).

I had forgotten that I had once done a bit a hand lining many years ago while holidaying in Devon. I paddled across a wide bay and about half a mile out the line I was towing cut through a shoal of mackerel and the rest was history. Despite the obvious advantages of a rod it is still dull compared to the urgency that hand holding a line gives.

If you are looking for some feather rigs for the summer influx of mackerel or a bit of Pollock fishing follow the link below. These are rigs I hand tie from  designs I have used for the last few years to take a few thousand fish.

Homemade mackerel feathers

Image Above: Homemade Mackerel feathers

Luckily today I found an hour between transporting people on and off the island to get in a bit of boat fishing. Realising the time constraints and the fact that a swell was still breaking heavily in the sound of Iona I stayed in the shelter of Easter Island fishing a reef that runs in a line from the island’s pier out into the sound.

No bait this time just homemade feather rigs jigged off the bottom. It didn`t take to find a shoal of baby pollock and cod. I moved into deeper water in an effort to find some large fish and struck into some saithe that were just on eating size. The real reason for the trip was to test out some rigs I had bonded rather than tied and then held with no problems even after a few encounters with kelp.

I am still waiting for a good calm day to get a little further out where the big fish live and really test some homemade tackle.

Image Below: Saithe (coal fish) caught on homemade feather rigs