The holiday is over

It has been a few months since I posted a blog, but the break has given me a chance to think about and try other things. In August I took a trip back up to Scotland and Mull where I used to live and made a short fundraising film with some friends who have a croft there. I stayed in the off grid camping hut they were hoping to be able to complete with funds from the film. When the film was complete It took a little over a day for their campaign to raise the money needed and a little over what they expected as a bonus. The hut itself is just a short walk from a phenomenal fishing spot where previously I had filmed the end of the “Making a Coffee Packet Mackerel Rig”, so let's just say I spent some time when not filming fishing.

I always seem to be going backwards and forwards between the future and the past, and although Mull is largely the past for me it was great to be part of something and also to be inspired again by a landscape and the people like my friends who are making a life there. Seeing Celia’s nervousness about appearing in front of the camera for the film really made me face up to actually dealing with my own unease at being in front of the camera for my lure making films.

So for my next project the ‘Five Minute Epoxy Trout Glider’ I stuck my ugly mug up front and also as a first decided to work with my wife for the film. I think when we had finished the video it almost felt like the first complete film I had been involved in; it had a real sense of story not just ‘look at this pretty lure’. After getting featured on Field and Stream’s website in the USA it quickly picked up some viewing figures.

For the future the blog is back and I will posting every few days again about lure making, fishing, and filming and just other shit that makes me feel happy. Well at least until something comes along to give me another break. Film wise I am working on a knife inspired lure which should be out in a week or so and then I think I want to finally make a swimbait.

If you have any content you would like included Paulpadam@aol.com

Gone fishing

This blog will be temporarily out of order while I go fishing and filming in Scotland, should be about a week. This was a advert I made a few years ago when I thought I would make and sell fishing lures.

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. 

How to make a Flying C Spinner

Image Above: The Flying C, another DIY project
Image Right: Balfour Bay, Erraid, Mull, Scotland

With my Pneumonia on the wane and the snowman who has stood guard over the garden for the last week starting to suffer from erectile dysfunction it seems only fair that I should be going on a little trip. Hopefully next week I will be sat in a cottage just back from a Hebridean  beach with a view over to the sea cliffs of the Burg, and if the mood takes me I may venture down to throw some lures or visit the local freshwater loch to test my new Flying C spinners on the local trout.

  Flying C Diagram and Blade Templates

  Tools and Materials List for the Flying C Fishing Lure

Happy Birthday

Image above: Hanging Up the lures to dry over the fireplace.

So it rained all day yesterday and I chose to visit the canal today, my birthday; to say the water was coloured would be an understatement, I may have been better casting my lures on the towpath. After far too long I drove back to my local lake to get a couple of hours in before sunset but it was to no avail. Despite the lack of fish, I was fishing which in fairness beats many of the alternatives

In preparation for this monumental day I had spent the previous evening down in the cellar making brass/copper spinner baits and jigs from some bar stock and sheet metal. I also threw together the ultimate quick make, balsa vibe lure which incorporates all of my annual profits as a weight (a five pence piece).

The lures all swam beautifully, the vibe lure vibed the spinner baits spun and the jig heads flew like well-aimed missiles, but where were the fish? Not catching does leave plenty of time for thinking and I came to the monumental realisation that pop music sounds like a continuous loop of shit advertising jingles and inversely jazz makes sense. Before I unearthed any further gems of wisdom the phone rang and when I answered I was treated to a rendition of happy birthday by some friends and their children. When the chorus subsided I told them I was just about to catch a fish and their phone call had ruined my chances, they apologised (well you have to blame somebody). They were phoning from the island of Mull and their little patch of land that overlooks Loch Scridain and giant sea cliffs of the Berg.

I remembered Mull again, living there and fishing, the endless summer days and the clarity of winter but most of all, the ocean. I said good bye and left the lake to the gathering dusk and the mist amongst the reeds.

Balfour Bay: Isle Of Erraid, Isle of Mull

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

An Ordinary Thursday

Image Above: New colours.

I had a very mixed day. I finally got my new E-Shop up and running and my first new customer followed shortly after. I spent the morning finishing some new Hybrid Casting Spoons that I had sprayed up in a fire tiger pattern with a stripe of UV reactive green. The UV reactive paint shifts light form the ultra violet range into the visible spectrum thus making it appear brighter in water where UV light penetrates a little deeper than the red end of the spectrum.  As an opening offer on my shop I have put half a dozen up at an introductory price of £9.95.

The rest of the day was a bit full on epoxy coating pine wobblers, sanding down balsa blanks ready for priming, priming some casting spoons, pouring a new silicone mould, coating floats with Nitrocellulose and then a trip to the post office and the Tackle shop. While buying some fishing weights I was introduced to a wholesaler who gave me a bit of insider knowledge, luckily I had a balsa wobbler in my pocket from a fishing trip earlier in the week to show him.

I finished the day photographing the casting spoons above and testing a lure in the bath I had carved from some short scraps of balsa. Best of all I got a couple of pictures from Scotland of a little girl who has just caught her first fish and on my lures.

Tomorrow is going to be a much harder day; I am looking after my youngest sons.

Image Above Right: Balsa Lure carved from Scraps
Image Below: Bea and her First Fish.

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

Birthday Presents

There is an expectation when I borrow the island’s boat for a bit of fishing that I actually catch enough fish to feed the island’s population. Including guests this is never more than thirty and usually between ten to twenty. Today’s trip was a little more pressured due to a certain youngster who is celebrating his birthday tomorrow and has demanded his favourite meal, fish and chips. I suspect for the rest of Britain fish and chips for twelve is a large order in a fish and chip shop, here being a little over fifty miles from the nearest chippy it means catching the fish and using our own potatoes for the chips.


From the pier the wind looked to be blowing somewhere between five and six and the tide was a little further out than I would have liked but the swell seemed to have petered out despite the chop drummed up by the wind. Apart from feeding people the main reason for the trip was to test my jointed sand eel lures. Testing lures and catching volumes of fish don’t always go hand in hand so for insurance purposes I took a boat rod with some homemade feather rigs, equipment usually guaranteed to fill a quota.

The wind carried me to my first mark a reef centred on a rock that dries at low water. Not used to casting from a boat I lost confidence and began by bashing the sand eel lure into the water and then hooking up with the bow rope. Eventually after prating round for ten minutes I gave up and got the boat rod and feathers out. It wasn’t long before I lost the weight to patch of kelp and began to wonder, why fishing? Having drifted in the wind just into the sound I decide to motor back and have another go with the eel.

I took things a little slower this time and put the boat in reverse to hold my position against the wind. The casting improved as I relaxed and gradually I got some distance. There wasn’t much depth of water over the kelp beds around the rock and feathering vertically probably would have been a chore. Casting and retrieving the lure at a steady rate kept me out of the weed and it wasn’t long before I hit into to some coalfish. The bites came hard and fast one fish actually left the water but many others broke the surface in the chase. At one point I was taking a fish on every cast and even in the falling light I could see the water explode as I began the retrieve. Out of the twenty or so coalfish I landed I kept eight which looked to be easily larger than the minimum size, the rest I returned. Just before setting off back to the pier I remembered the camera and hoped my luck would hold out and I could get some video.


Does the lure work? Shit yes.

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures, The Movie.

This is what I get up to when honest folk are in bed.

Pendulum Casting

Image Above: Pollock on home made feathers

Sunset has made its way into the afternoon and an hour’s fishing before dinner has become a race against the light. Today I was trying distance casting from my favourite rocks at the northwest corner of the island. I hand been out in the boat a couple of days ago fishing over a reef which runs parallel to the shore about 90meters out and taken a mixed bag. Getting out beyond the reef from the shore would take a bit of doing with a lure so I opted for a string of home feathers and lead bomb. Having never really fished in places where long distances where required I thought I would try out pendulum casting. It took me a while to remember the stance and swing from a DVD I had found in a charity shop but it wasn’t long before I was completely emptying my spool which was carrying about a 120 meters of braid. Once in the deeper water over the reef I hit into a shoal of juvenile coal fish and Pollock. Getting them back over the kelp covered reef wasn`t easy but I think the cleanly tied rig helped.

I was hoping some larger fish would venture in from the sound as the light dropped but it wasn`t to be. I headed back to feed the cows before it got completely dark.

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.

Snell or Whipping Knot

Image Above: A mackerel shelters from the rain
Location: Isle of Erraid, Mull, Scotland

I should have gathered by now that when the weather isn`t suitable for boat fishing it doesn’t mean it will be any better if I choose to fish off the rocks. This afternoon it wasn’t, it rained hard enough for a small river to develop inside my waterproofs and I had the sensation of wetting myself without the pleasure of the accompanying warmth. I stuck it out for an hour with a float rig and landed a larger than average mackerel. Having had to wait on previous trips for the mackerel to hook themselves after they had pulled at the bait strips for ten or even twenty minutes I decided against using a single hook opting for a new three hook set-up instead (see below). The mackerel took the bait on the first pull and the float disappeared. I waited before retrieving just to make sure it was hooked but half expecting my float to re-surface signalling the fish was still free as had happened too many times in the past. After a minute the line tightened, I lifted the rod and the fish turned and shot towards me. It wasn’t really a fight, too much like being at the fishmonger’s with an open bag.

The fun element left me finally when I bent down and the puddle that had developed in my hood ran down my back. Living on a small island at least ensures that the walk home is never longer than half an hour and in this case five minutes.

Image below: Alternative Pennel Rig and snell or whipping knot