Skaterboy
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2021
- Messages
- 1,085
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- Location
- Yorkshire
- Favourite Fishing
- Shore
From the day I passed my driving test I've spent a lot of my spare time yomping around the Scottish coast looking for good fishing marks. In the days before the internet made life easier you had to study OS maps and Admiralty charts and then get your hiking boots on and give the marks a try. I must have walked thousands of miles over the years and some marks produced good fishing and many didn't, but it was a great way to discover the Scottish coast. Most of my searches were around the North and West coasts but there was always one area further South that attracted my attention.
The rocky coast with deep water and strong tides around the Mull of Kintyre looked like perfect pollack ground and in the mid 90's I eventually got round to visiting the area. I had picked a few likely looking spots which looked accessible on paper but as I drove up the road to the lighthouse on the Mull I began to realise that it wasn't going to be easy. The car park above the lighthouse was about 1150 feet above sea level so it was a long walk down to reach the cliff top. It was then about a mile round the cliffs to the fog horn station where it looked as if there was a good fishable ledge. After a steep slide down the last section of cliff I reached the ledge to find half a dozen seals waiting just offshore but having made all the effort to get there I gave it a go anyway. It wasn't a complete washout and I caught a few pollack over 3lbs but the walk and climb back up to the car was a real lung burster.
After a rest day I decided to give the ground on the North side of the lighthouse a try. I'd seen some likely looking rocks on the previous walk down and set off in that direction. There were no paths on this side and I was fighting through heather and head high bracken and it was very slow going. I passed the site where the military Chinook helicopter crashed into the hillside in fog in 1994 and was surprised by how much wreckage was still scattered around. As I got slowly nearer the sea I realised that the rocks that looked as though you could jump from one to another were much bigger than they had looked from above. I carried on to the bottom but the rocks were as big as busses and I couldn't find a safe fishing spot. The climb back up was a struggle again though I did find a slightly easier route and saw a big herd of wild goats feeding on the slopes, animals much better suited to the terrain than me.
Apart from a bit of mackerel fishing at Campbeltown that was the end of my flirtation with the Mull of Kintyre but if I hadn't tried it I would have always wondered what I'd missed.
The rocky coast with deep water and strong tides around the Mull of Kintyre looked like perfect pollack ground and in the mid 90's I eventually got round to visiting the area. I had picked a few likely looking spots which looked accessible on paper but as I drove up the road to the lighthouse on the Mull I began to realise that it wasn't going to be easy. The car park above the lighthouse was about 1150 feet above sea level so it was a long walk down to reach the cliff top. It was then about a mile round the cliffs to the fog horn station where it looked as if there was a good fishable ledge. After a steep slide down the last section of cliff I reached the ledge to find half a dozen seals waiting just offshore but having made all the effort to get there I gave it a go anyway. It wasn't a complete washout and I caught a few pollack over 3lbs but the walk and climb back up to the car was a real lung burster.
After a rest day I decided to give the ground on the North side of the lighthouse a try. I'd seen some likely looking rocks on the previous walk down and set off in that direction. There were no paths on this side and I was fighting through heather and head high bracken and it was very slow going. I passed the site where the military Chinook helicopter crashed into the hillside in fog in 1994 and was surprised by how much wreckage was still scattered around. As I got slowly nearer the sea I realised that the rocks that looked as though you could jump from one to another were much bigger than they had looked from above. I carried on to the bottom but the rocks were as big as busses and I couldn't find a safe fishing spot. The climb back up was a struggle again though I did find a slightly easier route and saw a big herd of wild goats feeding on the slopes, animals much better suited to the terrain than me.
Apart from a bit of mackerel fishing at Campbeltown that was the end of my flirtation with the Mull of Kintyre but if I hadn't tried it I would have always wondered what I'd missed.
