The quest for adventure

Building on from our early trips to the Mull of Galloway, my friends & I were keen to explore possible fishing marks further up the north east coast along the Scottish borders. We set our sights on exploring St Abbs Head and we began our quest one April in the mid eighties.Finding new marks to fish is always a bit of a gamble but the fun is in the adventure.
After an hours worth of walking (it felt like alot more), we found a possible location at the bottom of some very steep cliffs. The mark itself was an isolated rock which looked like it was in relatively deep water close to shore. Actually getting to the mark was an achievement as it involves a very steep skree bank, and several treacherous narrow paths cut into the cliff face. But even once the angler has scaled all that, there is the small matter of a leap of faith to get to the fishing mark.It's a question of closing your eyes & trusting your feet as you are faced with a 4 feet gap to get across. Once that's done, you are now on a very steep angled rock with deep water & plenty of weed with just fulmars & puffins for company. We travelled light on those first expeditions-9 or 10 feet spinning rods, 25lb mainline and pockets of redgills.
Those first trips produced reasonable numbers of pollack-and our best fish nudged 7lbs. We didn't have any sophisticated tackle back then. Just tackle that was dependable & strong enough to bully fish out of the kelp. The problem we began to face was that we were loosing some good fish which had very strong determined runs. My friends decided to beef up their basic gear & used adapted beachcasters (super flick tips with a reducer butt) and 5000 size multipliers-predominantly Abu ambassadeurs which were more than capable of delivering the stopping power that was required. Personally I found this sort of approach a bit too heavy for me & so I turned to the carp market & invested in a very modest end carp rod.  My friends scoffed at me for this, but coupled with a shimano fighting drag 400 size fixed spool, I was able to bully fish out just as easily as my friends with their stepped down beach casters. But the difference for me was that I was able to enjoy the fight from smaller fish as well as the larger ones. We also moved away from redgills & turned more to the growing influx of latex lures. My personal favorite was the Mr Twister lure which had much favour in the late 80's. I found the action of that lure perfect for spinning and easy to cast with my basic carp type outfit. My best pollack fell to one of these lures one friday evening. The fish was knocking on 7lb but was eclipsed the next day by my friend's 8lb beast. That mark always threw up a surprise or two.
We then moved away from the twister lures & moved to frozen sandeel which seemed to provide constant takes. But we began to find that our favoured & more 'local' mark at St Abbs Head was not producing fish as constantly as it used to even though we returned all our fish. So we turned our attentions back to the west coast of Scotland.
There are so many marks that are available to fish along the Scottish west coast. The roving angler can be spoiled for choice. We focussed our efforts on the Mull of Galloway & have over the years, worked our way up that coastline. We try to travel light as we invaribly end up walking mile upon mile in order to find that 'fishy' looking mark, but we have found most of the area is now regularly fished & does no longer produce the quality of fish we used to see when we first started to go there in the mid 80's. We fished hard & long days with a multitude of lures but for all our efforts all we were getting were a handful of 1-3lb pollack and even then, a 3lb pollack was considered a good catch. Without sounding conceited, we all felt that we needed fresh challenges or adventures & so we all put in some research and tried to find more remote areas which were harder to get to but would possibly hold better quality pollack. And so 3 years ago, we stumbled across great potential in the hebredes. My friends put in many hours on the net looking at fishy looking marks on video sites and used local maps to find deep water. But of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating-so to speak, and so we had to arrange a trip up there to see if it was any good. From my old stomping ground of Newcastle, it was an 8 hour drive to the hebredes. But what a drive. It was stunning scenery from start to finish.  The adventure was just beginning for us and blessed with glorious weather on our first trip, we roamed around the island, picking up advice from locals and using the knowledge we had gained over the last 15-20 years. Getting to a new mark is not always easy but in rare cases, the effort put in can reap rewards with what you end up catching. I always look on a new fishing challenge as an adventure no matter what it involves & my friend Jason has invited me on a very local adventure this weekend as we continue our search for a late season pike. Whilst I am keen & looking forward to that now, come saturday morning, I will be totally sparked up & raring to go despite the silly o'clock start time. Hopefully I will get my first pike run since mid November.