A Testing Session

The sea is almost flat calm, the wind is a little more than a breeze and the boat is waiting on the pier steps. There are few if any days like this at this end of the year and as the boat idles away from the pier I look out into the Sound of Iona and then to the jetty over the bay where the van waits. No fishing today I am driving the island’s candle maker and a selection of candles to a Christmas fair twenty miles up the Ross of Mull.

It is late in the afternoon when I get back and the breeze has picked up but there is still a chance to get out there even if it is only for an hour’s fishing. I rush to the house and collect a lure I had given a final topcoat of resin to only yesterday and it still feels a little tacky. Ten minutes later and I am in casting range of my favourite reef.

The lure is a prototype and this is its second outing, the first a week ago ended prematurely with the diving lip snapping after a something grabbed it and took it down into the kelp. With a little surgery and a thicker lip we are back to face the fish and the kelp.
I carved the lure to look something like a juvenile pollock hoping to appeal to a large pollock’s cannibal instincts. It seems that big fish like big baits, or just possibly that small fish don’t like large baits. There are lots of small fish here and avoiding is a major problem, maybe my lure will scare them off.

On the third cast everything stops with a bag, the rod whips over as the fish dives. I keep my head realising it is diving for the kelp and pull the rod up high turning the fish sharply toward the surface. It dives again and runs in the direction of the boat; I wind the line in as fast as I can trying to keep the fish’s head up. As it nears the boat it finds some depth and bringing it to surface is almost a straight hoist of a job. A four and half pound Pollock, not bad for the lure's first victim.

I half-heartedly cast again but the thought of losing my prototype gets the better of me and besides the island’s population has shrunk this week, one fish this size could probably feed us all.

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.