Title gives it away. Steve is tying the knot this June and never shying away from an excuse to go Skate fishing, this one has been planned in for near enough a year.
Despite the success of the last couple of trips however, this one was to be a little more grounding. For one thing no Skate were landed, although we did get a few tentative runs between us that were unmistakably from our quarry – though sadly they all resulted in dropped baits.
The reality of the week was mostly horrendous weather combined with a lack of activity. The wind absolutely battered us from the west for the first three days, mostly in tandem with driving rain – enough to keep our enthusiasm at critical levels at times. Thank god we took the beach shelters otherwise I doubt we’d have fished it as hard as we did. Three full grown men with boxes, bait and all manner of mashing gear sat huddled underneath, slavering and snotting over a spluttering camp stove willing the kettle to boil in a bid to keep those spirits up!
The first night passed with little landed save for a suicidal dogfish that managed to hang itself on Steves 10/0 hooks. Steve was the first to get what we suspect was a couple of skate runs, followed by myself, although all were far more tentative than usual and resulted in dropped baits.
Always de-barb your hooks – large hooks like these have huge barbs which cause a lot of damage to the mouths of Skate.
The second night was much the same – in fact the weather was so disheartening on the second that we spent the third night mostly not fishing and turned attention instead to our favourite poisons – some sore heads the following morning!
Day 4 saw a break in the prevailing weather – the wind swung round to the north, bringing with it a bitterly cold drop in temperature but seemed to halt the brunt of the wet stuff, save for the odd hail shower. This gave the chance for a bit of early year species hunting during the late afternoon in which we managed pollock, codling and a few bonus black gobies to kick us off for the year. In all honesty early spring is a dire time of year for species up here, with most of the summer species having yet to arrive. Skate are still a possibility pretty much year round in the north west highlands at least, but if you’re looking for something to break the monotony whilst waiting for a run, then plan your trips later in the year when you’re more likely to find an abundance of wrasse and various other species to keep things interesting.
As darkness fell the wind died to all but a whisper making for a beautiful (albeit cold) nights fishing. Once again the skate weren’t playing, although the occasional nod on the rods kept us focused in anticipation, willing the rod to lop over. Steve managed a nice Thornback around 7lb that I would have put money on being a Skate given its initial run.
The following evening (the last evening of the trip) was much the same, nice and calm but with a distinct lack of activity. We slaved away over the fire trying to keep warm but after a tiring week and the prospect of an early departure, we decided to call it quits around 2am, jay having managed a solitary dogfish to break the blank for the evening.
So no Skate on this trip. A little disappointing on the fishing front, but as I’ve said before – there are worse places to blank – and we had a great laugh all the same.
Skate rigs
A few people have asked me about skate rigs, and I’ve went through a few years of refining my rigs to get to something that I’m happy with (basically an up and over with a few key features to help eliminate line twists and unclipping). On this trip however we experimented a bit with variations of the latest fad sweeping the U.K. sea angling community – “The Dongle” rig. Crudely borrowed from a carp anglers inventory (somewhat resembling a hair rig), these rigs aren’t exactly a new innovation and have been a firm favourite overseas in the likes of South Africa for shark fishing from the shore. As far as casting a big skate bait is concerned though, the performance was something we were really impressed by and we will continue to tweak to suit the style of fishing.
I will put a couple of follow up posts up about how to construct both rigs for those who’ve shown interest.