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Myself and my eldest daughter Emma had our 6th annual run up to SW Scotland this weekend after missing last year's due to illness.
I went to pick up the bait from Terrys on Friday afternoon and after a chat about where we were off to, he recommended that I try some blueys alongside my usual baits. I took 1 packet to try and after picking Emma up from work, we were on the road for 5:30pm.
First stop, as usual, was Carsluith were we planned to fish 2hrs either side of HW. Usually a good little shot, but bait stealing crabs and weed had us packing in and moving on after 1.5hrs without a fish.
We would have missed the best of the tide by the time we got across to Wigtown Harbour, so we kept on driving to another spot were we had a couple of hours sleep in the car and resumed fishing at 5am.
Fishing 2 rods each (1 bait and 1 spinning) we hit into fish straight away with dogfish between 1.5-1.75lb falling to bluey and mackerel, with bluey outfishing the mackerel by 3 fish to 1.
It went quiet for a while until first light, with Emma taking a 1lb pollack on ragworm and then the mackerel hit the spinners, with 4 in quick succession and another caught on, yes you guessed it, bluey!
By now it was bright and sunny and Emma landed a couple of wrasse on ragworm, her best one being just under 2lbs.
By this point we were running low on bluey and started to use it just to tip off mackerel baits, as mackerel on its own just wasn't catching anywhere near as many fish.
We continued to have good sport with pollack to spinners (they just weren't interested in sandeel or jellies?) and a few more doggies on our bluey tipped baits and then I caught a launce on the spinner which I freelined out into the current, despite the funny looks I got off Emma.
It must have been out for a least an hour, when Emma yelled and managed to grab the rod just as it was heading out to sea! After a canny little scrap I landed a pollack which tipped the scales at just over the 2lb mark. Funny thing was the launce was untouched, the pollack must have hooked itself while trying to grab it!
We packed up at 2pm Saturday for the long drive back. We had caught nothing bigger than 2lb, which is very dissappointing compared to the sport you could have when we first started fishing this area, but having 20 fish between us for a total weight of 25lbs (all returned except the mackerel) it wasn't a bad days fishing. Highlight of the trip was watching badgers playing during the night, priceless.
P.S. I would thoroughly recommend blueys to anyone heading up that way, it KILLED compared to mackerel, thanks for the tip Terry.
I went to pick up the bait from Terrys on Friday afternoon and after a chat about where we were off to, he recommended that I try some blueys alongside my usual baits. I took 1 packet to try and after picking Emma up from work, we were on the road for 5:30pm.
First stop, as usual, was Carsluith were we planned to fish 2hrs either side of HW. Usually a good little shot, but bait stealing crabs and weed had us packing in and moving on after 1.5hrs without a fish.
We would have missed the best of the tide by the time we got across to Wigtown Harbour, so we kept on driving to another spot were we had a couple of hours sleep in the car and resumed fishing at 5am.
Fishing 2 rods each (1 bait and 1 spinning) we hit into fish straight away with dogfish between 1.5-1.75lb falling to bluey and mackerel, with bluey outfishing the mackerel by 3 fish to 1.
It went quiet for a while until first light, with Emma taking a 1lb pollack on ragworm and then the mackerel hit the spinners, with 4 in quick succession and another caught on, yes you guessed it, bluey!
By now it was bright and sunny and Emma landed a couple of wrasse on ragworm, her best one being just under 2lbs.
By this point we were running low on bluey and started to use it just to tip off mackerel baits, as mackerel on its own just wasn't catching anywhere near as many fish.
We continued to have good sport with pollack to spinners (they just weren't interested in sandeel or jellies?) and a few more doggies on our bluey tipped baits and then I caught a launce on the spinner which I freelined out into the current, despite the funny looks I got off Emma.
It must have been out for a least an hour, when Emma yelled and managed to grab the rod just as it was heading out to sea! After a canny little scrap I landed a pollack which tipped the scales at just over the 2lb mark. Funny thing was the launce was untouched, the pollack must have hooked itself while trying to grab it!
We packed up at 2pm Saturday for the long drive back. We had caught nothing bigger than 2lb, which is very dissappointing compared to the sport you could have when we first started fishing this area, but having 20 fish between us for a total weight of 25lbs (all returned except the mackerel) it wasn't a bad days fishing. Highlight of the trip was watching badgers playing during the night, priceless.
P.S. I would thoroughly recommend blueys to anyone heading up that way, it KILLED compared to mackerel, thanks for the tip Terry.
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