Western Isles Day one, Kilmalaug bay , Skye.

[tdxs133pm]

must have been lucky because never ever been bothered at all by the little boogers

They must have sensed where you were from and thought sod him,thick skinned Yorky.

 

[fiveyardcast]

So, Yesterday was a day off, blowing a hoolie and persisting down so went shopping to Portree , it must have the most fish n chip shops per acre anywhere in the world !

Back at the cottage spent the evening catching up on some reading in and amongst , and decided that as the forecast for today was improving by 5.00 pm after an early tea I would give it an hour of the rocks below Duntulm Castle which is only a ten min drive away.

Fast forward to today, rained and blew another hoolie this morning
After tea at 5pm, full of chicken , new potatoes , salad and some foreign stuff , I gathered together the lure gear and with wifey parked up at the castle . I grabbed the gear and made my way to the marks I had spotted earlier whilst Ruth went doing photo stuff.It was two hours to high tide, and near enough the biggest tide of the month, what could be better ?

Made my way down the sloping pasture to the first mark.

View attachment 44735

Mostly grass ! But lookes really good, looking behind there is this .

View attachment 44732

I proceeded to thrash the water into a fine foam , trying several of my vast assortment of plastics. Managed to catch some weed , moved around the headland to the below mark, nice deep spot with plenty of rock and kelp beds. Nothing!

View attachment 44736

After several moves I spotted something lodged on a flat bit of stone, result,a new spool of bait elastic , at least somebody else had fished here . Hope they did better than me
I continued to cast far and wide, along the rocks straight out, close in , fast retrieve , slow, retrieve , sink n draw, etc etc. Nothing doing but at least I had the elastic to show for my efforts. Wifey managed to take a couple of snaps of me blanking again.

View attachment 44734

After an hour I was becoming somewhat dejected , so decided to call it quits and with wifey head back to the Ponderosa.

I am beginning to feel like Minstrel, the only consolation is that nobody else seems to be fishing at all . Maybe everybody knows something I dont ?

Things can only get better .

Hopefully .

To be continued.

Dave

Awesome. I know this spot really well and have had a tent pitched from where you took the top pic for well over a month of my life, all added up. My avatar pic was taken there. I love that place. We were once there for so long that we were virtually totally accepted by a family of otters that would float past on their backs checking us out. By then we probably smelt like them. Or fish. You often see white-tailed sea eagles above the hill rising out of the bay too.

All that said, Duntulm isnt a fantastic fishing spot compared to some of the other marks you've mentioned. The bigger pollock (probably to about 4lb) are a bit further around to left from where you were fishing, where the sea can be a bit churney and the snags a bit ominous. Ive seen conger on bait and had the 'Skye trio' (macks, pollock, coalies) from there but never caught the rumoured rays or cod even though ive been there all months of the year.

Funnily enough, i was going to mention Rhubha Hunish then saw your later report! I believe that's where the Whitby anglers caught the summer cod in that video with the huge skate. I know of one from that mark too (I fished there with one of the Whitby crew). I caught a cuckoo wrasse there as well as some very decent pollock - on my own Shimmy Exage!

Im back there in August.

Tight Lines!

 

[Another Angle UK]

@The Third Earl I don’t recall being bothered by midges on Shetland, think it was late June early July that I was there a good few years ago. Struggled with lure fishing from shore but charter boats get some cracking sport.

 

[The Third Earl]

Just a quick report from last night, found another nice rock mark, yomped along the cliff top at 6pm,settled down , sent both sets of baits on pennell rigs skywards and into about 25 foot of water , baits were squid and mackerel cocktails.




Tide was on the make so fished 3 hours up, swapped and changed baits, and directions of casts. Tried loop rigs with smaller hooks as well thinking maybe a rockling or flattie would save the day .Not a sniff of interest at all, baits still coming back untouched… the crabs must have gone on holiday or something, along with the fish .

As the evening wore on the Sun dipped behind the hill behind me, and like a switch had been thrown the temp dropped from pleasantly warm to almost cold , a stiff breeze blew up the coast and as I was doing so very well on the fishing front I decided to pack in. Blanking is not too bad if you are comfortable .

Today we have been out walking again, scoped out a couple of headlands called Rubha na H-Aiseig and Rubha Bheanachain , bit of a mouthfull there, the last one is just a mile from the cottage, along a cliff top ,down a cliff path, through some scrubland and across a flat grassy area and then onto some very nice rocky platforms and scars .Looks quite promising as it has a bit of a tide rip , and the rock platforms drop into deepish water looking out to sea as opposed to bays , I may well take the lure rod out there in the next couple of days .The area looks as though it rareley gets a visit as it is well off the beaten track and not a place you would want to cart a shedload of gear to in normal circumstances.







That is the spot, the island to the left on the horizon is Eilean Trodday. The rock ledges continue to the left for probably near enough 3000 feet acording to Google earth, so plenty of ground to cover .

Good job I like walking

Dave

 

[wingnut55]

Beautiful scenery again mate. And lovely pics too....

Ian.

 

[The Third Earl]

Not fished today, but went for a walk and saw a couple of anglers on a very isolated rocky venue, spoke to them and they had come quite a way to fish Skye.
I wished them well . They had carried a good load of gear and bait for a good half hour plus walk on not the easiest of terrain , I clocked it at 1-1/4 miles on google earth .
I think they would be fishing the tide. If I been a bit younger and had my fishing head on I would have done the same. I hope the weather holds out for them , it can change in no time here and they were nowhere near any form of shelter.

Good luck guys .

David

 

[The Third Earl]

So, yesterday was my last chance to target a Spur or even a Skate, I had scoped out several places over the past week that seemed to have the potential,a rock mark into deepish water , sandy bottom with a bit of a tidal movement, so armed with Squid and Mackerel, a selection of end rigs, my Tourney Rock and Shimmy Ultegra loaded with 60lb braid I yomped what seemed like miles. Owing to the terrain I opted for just the one bottom rod and my ever faithful Lure rod and a selection of plastics to while away the minutes between bites .

The tide was just starting to ebb, not a huge tide, the weather was fine and warm but with a north westerley breeze which just took the edge off the warmth of the sunshine .

The end gear was Semi Pulleys with 4/0-3/0 Pennel rigs for the Spurs and bigger single to 200 lb trace line for the Skate.

The tide was pulling a bit and initially I had to start out with 200 gramm leads, as it eased I managed to drop to 175s.

As always, the first cast sees me full of anticipation of the tip being pulled down , The hooks had a good cocktail of mackie and squid and were well loaded up to give off a good scent trail, everything looked good.

As I cast in , I caught a glimpse of 3 brightly coloured Kyaks being paddled furiously against the tide a long way off to my right, no idea where they were heading at it is at least 10 miles to anywhere they could land .. thats their problem though, mine was to work out where the fish were.

Which was difficult, because as it turned out yesterday was a carbon copy of every other time I had tried bottom fished baits, they were coming back untouched again, and to put icing on the cake , the lures were having a hard time of it as well.


I gave it 7 hours on the down, with nothing to show for the effort but a wind tan to the left hand side of my face .

Puzzled, eventually it was time to pack up and do the long yomp back to the car, my only consolation being that I had given it my best . I have found it hard to decide why things seem so quiet here, I know its that time of year between the winter species and summer species, but even on the Yorkshire coast there are still fish to be caught at this time of year, here the ground seems barren with a capital B , which probably accounts for the lack of catch reports.


Anyway, it has been a lovely two weeks away, great scenery , good weather for the most part, some great walks and a great self catering location. I would love to be here in July/August but really the mozzies have put a stop to that .
On the plus side I have had some good pollack fishing from cliff marks that many would not attempt so it is not all bad on the fishing front.

As I write this a couple of anglers are making their way along the cliff below the cottage . I hope they are steady on their feet as it has been raining a bit and it could be slippy, having watched one of them trip over a stile and go base over apex already.They dont look kitted up for rock marks so I hope they will be OK.

I will probably walk along the cliff later to se how they are doing, I hope they have better luck than I did…

I have spoken to several lure anglers here in the last two weeks, nobody has had anything to show for their efforts so it seems my using speed jigs off deep cliff marks was the way to go.



So everybody, thank you for reading my mostly “non” catch reports, and giving me encouragement to keep going , as said I am getting to be a bit of a “Minstrel” where the Isle of Skye is concerned .

Gear has now been washed and cleaned off , rods packed away and car ready for an early start on the long drive home tommorrow.



Dave

 

[The Third Earl]

Quick postscript.

Went for a walk later , no idea why but there were 5 anglers fishing then,a mixture of lure and bait being used. I sat and watched them for an hour before they all packed up.
Not one had anything to show for their time spent there.
The two that had been there since about 1.45pm had been there longest, about 6hrs, without a bite or hit on the lures , they were both local chaps who looked to know their stuff and said it was remarkably quiet for the time of year and sea state.

I suppose its some consolation.

Dave

 

[fiveyardcast]

Quick postscript.

Went for a walk later , no idea why but there were 5 anglers fishing then,a mixture of lure and bait being used. I sat and watched them for an hour before they all packed up.
Not one had anything to show for their time spent there.
The two that had been there since about 1.45pm had been there longest, about 6hrs, without a bite or hit on the lures , they were both local chaps who looked to know their stuff and said it was remarkably quiet for the time of year and sea state.

I suppose its some consolation.

Dave

Thanks for your reports this week Dave. I've enjoyed reading them, and seeing the pics of my favourite place on earth. Real shame about the fishing, but you did everything you could, and that's fishing i guess.