Fishing Diaries: The end of the Oban jinx
While many of us were doing everything we could to avoid the Siberian temperatures that hit Scotland in the early part of the year, The Courier's Ian Lindsay braved the cold to fish for skate off Oban. Here he recounts an exhausting battle with a monster of the deep.
A cold but happy Ian with his incredible catch.
It was a brave pair of lads who set off from the east of Scotland in early 2010. The angling forums had been quiet, the odd shore cod apart, and boat fishermen up and down the country were stuck in port as much by the doggedly refrigerator-like weather as sea conditions.
Still, I'm never one to turn down an opportunity, and when my mate Doug called suggesting a swift daytrip to Oban to take advantage of relatively light tides and a window in the weather I wasn't going to say no, was I?
On higher ground, snow was still much in evidence -- and when we teamed up on the bonnie if chilly banks of Loch Earn before driving on to Oban together, Doug's boat well was full of fresh snow that had fallen in Lothian that morning.
Set-off point was the Puffin Dive Centre, and, oh, was it cold! Still, once you're geared up in plenty of thermal layers it's only your fingers and face you can feel falling off, so what's to complain about? Always worth easing your vehicle down the slip with extra care, though, as ice combined with slippery green weed can see more than the boat taking a dip. Not sure if a Freelander floats, though I have my doubts...
Meeting an enemy
Now Oban, it must be said, is the opposite of a happy hunting ground for me. My first 11 trips (mainly on charter boats) had produced some nice fish such as a 38lb tope and a few double-figure congers, but not so much as a sniff of a skate. Yes, other people had caught them, while I'd had plenty in other places, but see me, see Oban? Sworn enemies!
The cold weather gave us another start on the way out -- Doug's Evinrude eTec outboard grizzling about the zeroish temperature by sounding a buzzer -- but the engine worked fine after a quick restart, which is just as well, as a couple of things quickly became evident: the relative calm when setting out (below) was going to give way to livelier seas than the 8mph forecast had suggested, and there were no other boats out. Nice to have our choice of marks, but there was a certain air of being on our own if anything went wrong.
Doug got the anchor down swiftly, and the baits were sitting reasonably well with 2lb of lead, which may seem ridiculous to inshore fisherman but is quite standard issue for this sort of ultra-deep water stuff -- though it was clear any notion of pursuing other species with small baits on a second rod would be out of the question. Tangles -- especially ones involving those spiky little critters, spurdogs -- can prove fatal to lines they come into contact with in the complex vortex of tides at Oban, and we didn't want to lose 500 feet of expensive braid for the sake of a silly wee fishy! So one skate rod apiece it was, period.
The battle begins
At least the sun was out by now and though the higher peaks of Mull were snow-frosted, I could feel life returning to my fingers. Just as well, as I'd need them: my Oban jinx was about to end.
It all happened with unseemly haste: my Penn Waveblaster 30-50 waggled hysterically before a fish began to strip line off against the ratchet, heading way uptide towards the anchor rope. Good to have one on, not so good that it had swum that way, as it meant -- due to the way the seats face in Doug's boat -- that the whole fight would be a stand-up affair. Combined with the lumpy sea alluded to earlier, this was going to be quite a struggle.
06.08am - 12.05.2010 Doug - Edinburgh, UK Report This
Nice one Ian, and high time the sea angling column returned as it had quite a following in the past.
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