Winter Hideaway

With the cold North Easterly winds now set in on the East coast a jaunt over to Loch Etive in Argyll helps keep the winter blues at bay.

The first weekend in January was earmarked for such a trip and perfectly timed to work off some of the Christmas fayre that seems to have attached it's self to my waist line.

We met on a frozen shore line on a cold but still January morning. A good forecast for the day ahead gave us hope but mutterings in the camp were of poor catches over recent tides.

A total of twelve kayaks turned up for our gathering ,all the boats used the Ebb tide to their advantage and made their way up the loch for the morning stint. I followed suite and made my first few exploratory drifts over the rough ground near the quarry. A couple of codling's were first to mark the score card, swiftly followed by a succession of small Coalfish to kept me busy for an hour or two. Brian was well off the blocks on his one man species race.........

It wasn't long before the cold got the better of me and as I was ready for a change of scenery. An ideal time to swing the paddle for half an hour and head further up the loch. A brief paddle warmed me up and put me onto a deep shelf just off Glen Noe.

A perfectly positioned marker buoy served as my anchorage and my bait was soon heading down into the darkness of the Abyss. Several minutes later, what started off as a few tentative bites soon developed into a hooped rod as the first Spurdog of the day decided to put in an appearance.

A few more missed runs, cold feet, cold hands and the thought of a hot cuppa was enough to get me fired up and heading back down the loch to Taynuilt. With hot soup, coffee and our feet warmed up it was time to fasten our lights on and head down the loch with the first of the Ebb. The late afternoon/evening plan was to fish the bay at Inveresragan, you can just see the small white cottage behind the bay in this picture...... The Ebb tide proved to be very dissapointing for us, as did the couple of hours of darkness we fished into. Stephen had a decent spur and a reasonable Thornback from the ropes before Airds point. For the rest of us it was very slow, Doggies, Whiting and small Spurs being the order of the day.

I've had better days on Etive but that's the nature of the beast, it does tend to blow hot and cold throughout the winter months. In hindsight I think a bigger tide would have made all the difference for us, but you can't have it perfect evey time. Most importantly, we all went fishing and we all came home,................. safely.