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Friday 11 July 2014

Mackerel and ling in loch Linnhe!

Lately I have focused on the trout in the streams and neglected my sea fish.. So I decided to change this a bit.. I'm curious to see if the vibe/blade bait pattern for pollock is still on, so I visited my pollock mark again. The place looks different now and the seaweed and kelp have really grown. This made the correct presentation of these lures difficult and I had to switch to something weedless. I used a Lunker City Ribster on a 3.5g texas jighead as I have great faith in this presentation both because of its attractiveness and weedless/snagless ability. After a couple casts and working the lure O.T.D doing practically very little retrieve-wise, I got hit and struck into a good fish.. The fight was furious but relatively quick and a nice pollock was landed! This means that the fish are still there and I will just have to adapt and use my typical weedless soft plastics instead of the hard lures now. I did enjoy getting them on the blades though..! After the first fish I got a couple more bites but no hookups, the light was fading though and I headed home.
Still there...

Today I wanted to fish for trout along with my action camera so that I could get some nice footage and later visit some marks on lochs Linnhe and leven. Things didn't go as planned though, as the camera run out of battery before I got the action (!) and I would have to go back home to recharge it. I decided to stop with the trout as I didn't want to unsettle the other swims so that I could visit them later in the day. Instead I went to a mark that although near to me and with a good depth as well as looking productive, hasn't given me anything besides a couple bites... Its a deep basin enclosed by a rocky peninsula and an artificial boulder wall. Theres a stream running into it and the vegetation is thick in the water. The bottom is mostly mud/sand  but close in there are a lot of snags/boulders and kelp. Previously I hadn't covered  the place seriously but today I worked the area well, fan-casting and bumping the bottom. I used various articulated micojigs
 (that I will cover in a post soon) as they are perfect for searching out new areas. I wasn't getting much in the distance and the bites started coming when the lure was close to where the soft-meets-hard close in. The first fish, as usual for these deep marks, were poor cod  and this gave me hope for more to come. In another cast I let the lure sink on tight line and got a fish on straight after touching bottom. It felt decent and fought in a sort of cod-like fashion, it also pulled some line and I was expecting a nice codling, but then a long silhouette started coming towards the surface. It took me completely by surprise but it was a small ling that liked the ecogear shirasu. One look at the ling's  mouth and I suddenly thought about all those cut lines In Etive and I
was pretty sure now that the culprit was ling! I thought that this fish prefers offshore wrecks but then again the depths here are big and there's plenty of structure and food for them. Another unlikely species for the LRF list added!
 I persisted fishing and moving towards the back end of the bay where the vegetation was more prolific and i started catching some small pollock and a couple codling, the fish had black spots and I think that this means that  only now they started to get really active in this location. Its amazing how different the timing can be for fish even in lochs of close proximity...
Ling on LRF!

Sharp teeth!

A beautiful location.


Pollock on Ecogear minnow.

Little codling with the characteristic black spots..




After a while I thought of trying my luck on the top layers of the water hoping that mackerel may be around as its meant to be the middle of summer! I put on a 2.5" Tict brilliant on a 3g jighead and after a few casts, I got hit OTD soon after the lure landed. The take and fight was unmistakable and the first mackerel of the year was in my hands! I kept the fish for lunch and proceeded to catch another slightly larger one on a Savagear lrf psycho sprat. I was very happy with the short session and i decided to go home and enjoy my fish fresh with a cold beer!
They are here!


Tomorrow I'm planning to visit loch Fyne again and i hope to get some good footage to put a video together..

Thanks for reading!

Gear used.
Rod : Majorcraft CRK-T782AJI
Reel: Mitchell Mag Pro1000
Mainline: Sunline Siglon fluorocarbon, 3lbs
Rig: microjig, jighead
lure: Ecogear Shirasu worm, Tict brilliant, Ecogear Minnow, Savagear lrf psycho sprat, Lunker City Ribster

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