Fishing In Paradise with Morning tide fishing

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Fishing for plastic, Sea Chair

Sea Chair from Studio Swine on Vimeo.

This is not lure making and it is not really fishing but it is a little of both

The lost fishing trip

Looking toward the Burg from Eilean nan damh (island of the stags) Mull, Scotland

I drove four hundred miles crossing the border into Scotland and taking the ferry to the Isle of Mull, I thought I had outran my pneumonia but there it was like a heavy suitcase that someone had chained around my neck. For the best part of a week I sat staring out of the cottage window or the windscreen onto the bay and beach while the ocean and my fishing tackle rested easy. Not fishing is hard; not fishing here is almost criminal.

At a loose end I read the guide books and some of the history of local settlements that had been emptied in the Clearances almost two centuries ago. Sad letters from old men begging to stay on the land where they were born and had made lives,  sad letters that were answered with bailiffs. While the words penned are now only a matter of historical record the voices they conjure have lost none of their power to tug at my own feelings for land and loss.
   

The empty villages still haunt the glens, un-roofed carcasses sleeping in moorland grasses or remnant hearths and stacks that have the look of giants stalled by the soft peat.

A little further up from the bay my friends are carving out at new life from that same island soil on a small croft. The first beds have been dug and the kelp collected from the beach has been laid as a blanket to rot down and replenish. 

 Their boat lies in the grass awaiting some minor repairs before it too returns to the bay a little ahead of the returning summer mackerel.  Maybe I will return but a little less weighed down with luggage. 

A Fish Called Jesus

Vid Above: Shameless Self Promotion


I had forgotten that the wind can blow here for days if not weeks on end without pausing to draw breath. In Italy when the bora blows people are driven mad by it, here on the Isle of Mull people live leaning into the wind that blows off the ocean and on rare days of stillness they find themselves unbalanced like cliff top trees.

It felt like a long week of watching for a break in the weather while the dinghy hung on its mooring in the shelter of the bay. Isaac the young son of the friends we had come to visit was almost as eager to get out into some depth of water as myself. Earlier in the week we had tried a bit float fishing from the rocks at the head of the bay. After a slow start we tried to charm the fish from the sea with Isaac promising them fish tanks and all you can eat fish food buffets. Later rather desperately I tried summoning the support of the fish god but Isaac suggested that the Jesus of the fish world might be a better bet. I tried to image what the Jesus of the fish world would look like between bouts of crippling laughter.

When the wind finally ran itself out on the last afternoon of my short visit Phil, Isaac’s father grabbed the petrol tank while I and Isaac followed with the fishing rods. Out beyond the reefs the chop hindered our pace throwing up the plumps of spray to wet down my jacket and remind me that too long at the lakeside had made me soft. A short distance down the sea loch Phil idled the engine just off a rock one of the longer residents of the bay had showed him.

I let the line off the reel and on my first drop I pulled up a single undersized mackerel which I slipped off the hook and dropped back into the blue. On the other side of the dinghy Isaac’s spinning rod whipped over and there was some confusion whether it was his oversized lead weight or a fish. He hauled it back up with some help from his father and landed a nice cole fish (Coley, Saithe) and a good sized mackerel. Over the next five minutes we hauled up just over twenty mackerel some a little on the small size were slipped back into the sea. The Feather rigs had done their job again and we were on our way back to the bay for a fish dinner.
Our prompt return was taken by those who had stayed behind as a sign that we had been beaten by the conditions and as we tied up a pan of pasta was put on the hob as standby in the absence of a fish supper.

I filleted the fish in the sun just above the beach by the cottage doorway as the boat’s owner the local telephone engineer stopped for a chat. He was off for a bit of rock climbing and Phil promised him a share in the catch when he returned from the rock face. When I had finished and my hands were blooded I walked down to the water and tossed a fish spine into the air; even before it splashed down the gulls had left their meanderings to swoop in. I left the scraps at the water’s edge as the gulls’ calls echoed off the row fishermen’s cottages at the head of the beach.



A final note.


Two days later the Boat’s owner Steve sadly passed away. He leaves two young children and a wife. I knew him as BT Steve a name he acquired while repairing the island’s telephone lines for British Telecom (BT). On the morning of the boat trip he had seen me fishing from the rocks at Uisken beach while perched atop a telephone post. When I saw him again later outside the cottage he asked if it was myself who had been fishing at Uisken and we talked about the fishing marks along that part of the coast. He told me about a deep channel that runs between a headland and small rock offshore where big pollock hold up and I told him if I get back to the island I will give it a go.

Image Below: Eilean Corrach (Steep Island, Approx Translation from Gaelic) at the Entrance to Kintra Bay, Isle of Mull, Scotland

Foil, fimo, felt tips and fish

Image Right: Coal Fish on another home made Lure

After four years, my time on the island is coming to an end and there are still so many fish I never got to catch.  

 Overnight the wind along with the swell dropped until a stillness settled over the bay and Sound. Just after nine I padded up the street to collect Ryan who despite the prospect of holding a fishing rod while being sat in a boat on the North Atlantic, was in bed. I encouraged his would-be mother in-law and girlfriend to eject him using any means necessary before stomping off to the pier to sort out the boat and tackle. I don’t understand the idea of being late for fishing, every minute spent in bed is a minute stolen from the possibilities afforded by a fishing rod.

I checked the fuel, started the engine before stringing lines through rod eyes while I waited. Ryan finally made it to the pier and we headed out into the soup.  Our first mark was a small reef that had just become visible on the falling tide. I was fishing with another prototype made from Fimo (polymer clay, see pre. Post), and a little nervous, wondering if all the energy I had invested in the lure would bring any reward now I was out on the water.  First cast and a fish takes it, shit I was happy even after it threw the hook close to the boat. Second cast and this time it came home with a decent sized coal fish, at this point I didn`t care about the rest of the trip and to be honest it was not the best fishing trip on record.  Foil, Fimo, felt tips, wire, a bit of weight and a hook. 

Image below: Looking Back to Jura from the Sound of Iona

Fishing with fixed arms

Image above. Fishing with fixed arms

The wind has not dropped below a gale force eight for over a week now, I want to go fishing and soon. Carved the lure in the above image out of pine in an attempt to stave off the boredom.

Fly Fishing For Pollock

Image Above: Pollock on the fly

Image below: Ripple tail fly cut from washing-up gloves

Image Bottom: Fly fishing into evening

I once believed the fly fishing was about the most ridiculous and inefficient way to catch fish, like attempting to drive a car while locked in the boot. Despite owning a fly rod and using it regularly my opinion has changed little, I know there are endless books and magazines that extoll the almost religious nature of fly fishing but I am an atheist.

With all that said I ventured onto the island’s pier yesterday afternoon holding a fly rod loaded with sinking line, an eight pound tippet and homemade fly. As a full moon rose out of the mountains on Mull across the bay I landed a selection of pollock and saithe from the shoals of fish that move in from sound as darkness gathers. Few were of any size but it but I briefly found some kind of casting rhythm and fly fishing didn’t seem that much of a task after all.

I was most proud of the fly a true junk item made from copper wire stripped out of and appliance, a tail cut from a plastic bag, insulation tape and a bit of nail varnish. Beautiful it isn’t but deadly none the less.

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

Image above: Drying Floats

I got back to bit of sliding float making using balsa wood that I had bought to make lures. It is a bit easier to work with than cork but still needs a lot of finishing with sand paper. The centres are once again of hollow cane and the heads have been airbrushed and then silver foil added. The foil really helps locating the float when the tide takes it some some distance especially in large waves.

Epoxy Putty Lure

Image Above: Solid Epoxy Spoon Lure

So I hand carved the 99e wobbler shown in my last post, through wired it, lead weighted and balanced it, covered its gills with foil, sprayed it with an airbrush, coated it with epoxy, added the bib and hooks. I thought I had the best lure in the world so I bought a new Abu pro-max bait caster reel, thinking I have the best lure I must have the best reel.
I have never used a bait caster so on my first cast I mess up, but I mess up using such force that my lure casts an amazing distance. I was proud until I realise the line has not gone with it and my lure was

out in the north Atlantic free and unattached. Farewell lure, you wobbled beautifully, you dived to just the right depth and surfaced so I could pull you over the weeds and tonight and for ever you will swim with the fishes.

Needless to say I have had to re-arm. This time I have made a spoon style bait using epoxy putty, lead and wire. It is flat backed and rolls from side to side on the retrieve even fluttering to the bottom when the line is let out. It can be used like a jerk bait and rises to the surface quiet easily making splashes a bit like a popper, it is really a good all-rounder.

The idea was to make a lure that had the look of a sand eel and weighed 20grams, perfect for my rod. So I weighed all the materials beforehand and adjusted them as needed. Now I have got used to my pro-max reel the lure casts like a dream and I am not sure if I will ever go back to a fixed spool reel. As for testing the lure, well I need some deeper water as we have had our first snow on the local mountain and the fish have headed out of the shallows. I may have to wait for the boat to go back in the water or make the long walk southwest corner of the island.