After the lord mayors show.

After such a stunning days fishing with Steve & Kev on the previous day, it was always going to be hard to follow that and the mood in the caravan on the sunday morning was slightly downbeat. It had been a somewhat disturbed night at times with very strong winds battering the sides of the caravan & the rain sounding like someone throwing stones at the outside of the carvan all night. It was cold as well, and as I cooked up the last of the bacon, sausages & eggs, we discussed the plan of attack for fishing on such a vile summers day. Indeed, the key word here was 'summer'. It was in fact the back end of June & here we were on the west coast of Scotland, staring at gale force winds and driving rain & a daytime temperature of 9 degrees. Had this been April or October, I wouldn't have minded, but the end of June? It just didn't seem right & I couldn't get my mindset into the fact that this was summer.
The full English breakfast went down well, and we began to sort out the gear that we would need for the days session. Watching tv was ruled out so we got our gear together & prepared to do battle against the elements. I had decided to err on the side of caution & wore 7 layers of clothing - a wicking base layer, followed by a thermal body suit, then a tee shirt, another mid layer, a fleece shirt and 2 - yes TWO rain coats. Over the top? I don't think so. I had wanted to wear full neoprene chest waders but I let Steven & Kevin talk me out of that as they figured that I'd sweat like a pig on the long walk to the mark we had decided to fish-the same mark as the previous day. I must admit they had a point, but I did like the idea of keeping dry. But I let my mind rule my heart & I opted for light waterproof over trousers in a vain attempt to compromise lightness yet maintain dryness. I was wrong!
It was a predictably wet walk-very wet. And the wind sounded like a constant express train in your ears. Standing up was a challenge, let alone walking. Now I like watching Bear Grylls. I think he's great & admire him so much, but I tell you, the conditions we endured on that walk to the fishing mark would push even his reserve to the max. It took an age to walk to the rock mark. It was then that I discovered that the lightweight waterproof over trousers weren't. And my supposedly water proof walking boots were not. In fact, I would have been altogether drier if I'd jumped straight into the sea which was by the way, in a state of 'getting rough'. And then there was the cold. Bone chilling, skin numbing cold. Combined with the rain & the wind, it was not a million miles away from how we would fish during the depths of winter on the north east coast for codling. But now it was the end of June & it was a strange way to fish in summer.

We arrived at the location  & began to set up the gear. Even that was a struggle. With the extra layers on, everything took so much longer to do so I had decided to stick to simple rigs & hopefully not have to re-rig too often during the day. And so we began to fish the area. It was predictably hard. The fish were not as abundant as they were the previous day which is hardly surprising given the drastic change in conditions. All credit to Steven & Kevin-they battled away in the elements & caught pollack throughout the day. Another ling came in, this time to Steven & it was a good fish at about 3lb. Finding any sort of shelter or protection from the elements was almost impossible as we were on a very exposed rock ledge. It was a simple matter of put up & shut up. But it's hard to keep spirits up when conditions are so extreme. We were all wet & all cold but despite the conditions, we'd still managed to catch. Steven ended his day with a cracking 6lb 6oz pollack
which justified all his efforts & was a well earned reward for such brutal conditions. Kevin averaged a good 4lb catch rate & he too got fitting reward for sticking in at the task. I finished the day with a 9 pollack haul with the best fish knocking on the 5lb mark. Photos were rare on that day given that it was so windy & wet, but I did manage a few snaps for the photo album. It was a brutal walk back to the car & it was made all the more hard by the condition we were all in. I'm sure Steve & Kevin were looking forward to getting into the dry caravan & tucking into a hot dinner-which was going to be sausage casserole. I have to say that it was the best meal of the 4 days, and it was a perfect meal to warm us all up. We stoked up the small gas fire in the caravan & started to attempt to dry out the clothes. It wasn't going to work. But it was our last night so we really didn't mind that much. We agreed that this had been probably our best trip to date even though the weather had done it's level best to spoil our last day. We had discussed what we hoped for on the journey up & what tactics we would use and I think it's fair to say that we succeeded in most of what we wanted. We fell short of the elusive double figure pollack that we have so longed for, but it's likely that we may well have lost fish that came very close to that. The biggest landed was 7.5lb and with a second biggest fish at 6.6lb, which by any standards was a great result. An average fish of 4lb and plenty of happy memories for us all to take away. Job done.