Skye diving Pollack video

The second day of my trip didn’t go exactly to plan. The idea was to launch at dawn and catch the light and the period leading up to HT. When I went out to the car I couldn’t believe I had a flat tyre. I had gone down a pothole on my way up from the slip but thought I had got away without any damage. It was Sunday on Skye and my options were somewhat limited. I really didn’t fancy a 6 hour drive all the way home on a space saver and I needed to be fully mobile early Monday morning. When business opened up I made a few calls and organised to meet a mobile fitter in Fort William. This meant I would start late and finish early and not get all the way down to visit Kilt Rock. Poor show given I was all the way up here and the fishing was so good. I made the best of my options and had a few hours on the water. Here’s the video of my trip.

Skye diving Pollack from Martin A on Vimeo.

This cost me what would probably would have been three hours productive fishing!

The Outback’s heel protection has taken a beating but that’s what it’s there for. I’ll replace this in the months ahead and add a few more pieces here and there. There are one or two places I'll need to drag it next year.

Staffin slipway, nice spot to launch but the road down here is littered with potholes if you find yourself here.

Long road to Skye

It occurred to me that most of my fellow bloggers had made this trip already this year and with the favourable weather it seemed like too good an opportunity for me to pass up. 6 hours of driving later, most of which was like gorillas in the mist, without the gorillas. These were substituted by a variety of slow moving vehicles (even when it was safe to go faster than 25mph) Some of the views on the drive up were truly uplifting. The mist and sunlight mixed together layering the landscape so you could never tell what the next summit or bend would deliver as a view, awesome. I’ve got some video but it won’t do it justice. By the time I got to my B&B and then on the water it was 1pm. The fishing was good as well….. Poor Cod, Ballan, Cuckoo Wrasse and Coalies. When the tide turned and the angle of the sunlight changed a little it was time for the Pollack as they weren’t cooperating till then. It was good right up till my GPS ran out of juice and the light was almost gone. No 4am start on Sunday, only 5 minutes to the slip, good news!

Having got ready in a hurry last night I forgot a few items, leader for one, small hooks another. I also only had one Redgill Evo in pearl with me( I have at least four) This is usually a winner in this sort of light and so it proved today. I put a ball weight above it to get it down but eventually lost it to a snag. The Bass Assassin Sea Shad 6 inch in firetail/chart filled its boots. I'm Looking forward to my Sunday session.

Pessimistic optimist

Stewart and I haven’t fished together for a while so we hired a boat and had a day afloat making the most of the unseasonably nice weather. We didn’t have the best start, problems with his fish finder, problems with my back up GPS, I thumped the jetty full on with boat within the first 10 seconds, oh how we laughed. Could it get better? Maybe yes, maybe no, that’s fishing some days; there are worse things to be dealing with on a sunny Friday in October, it’s only fishing at the end of the day.

The first 2 spots were unusually devoid and despite deploying some nice baits and lures which I know should work we didn’t have a fish by 1pm which was odd. On the third move, I was surprised when I hooked a big stripey on my first cast. I was hedging my bets and was already using a lure as the bait settled. At this point I felt we needed as many options as we could muster. I had to drop the lure rod to pick up the other one which was just about over the side of the boat. This ended in a mess as it tangled both lines and I ended up pulling the hook when the fish went between the transom and the engine; enter stage left, the circus theme tune…

Thankfully from here on in it was all action, lots of small Perch but with a handful of nice fish split 50/50 between lures and bait. I’m sure the Perch were using the shade of the boat as cover in these conditions so when it turned with the breeze I followed the shadow dropping down a bunch of worms which resulted in the best fish of the day.

Stewart setting a variety of traps. I'm just glad there was no lightning in the forecast.

Anyone lost a worm?

We were both surprised no Bream showed as we were looking forward to catching a few.  To be fair at one point a bite was a surprise. For a pessimistic optimist I thought it ended well.