0930-1715 HW 0955 4.7mDue to the changing northerly winds this trip was a bit of a last minute decision .Windguru seems to be all over the place with it's forecasts so I relied on what I could see at the back of the house to make my decision.
We started by heading to the Frode, and once again attempt to locate what, I think , is it's boiler, which we found on a previous trip.Several passes were made of both the wreck and 'boiler' numbers, but to no avail.We tried drifting with lures and a bold mackerel took my 'norden' so It was on with a set of feathers and In no time at all I had half a dozen or so of the critters on board.
With nothing further showing, we decided to relocate to a new mark -East Ditch. On arriving an Orkney Day Angler was drifting the mark,fishing float fished live mackerel and spinning. I called 'Laure Anne' up on the radio and skipper Clive, who was extremely friendly,came over for a chat and gave us a couple of pointers.
50yds north of us were some big pinnacles which fished well for bream on the bigger tides, and 'our spot' , on a down ward slope, was a good smoothound mark.
It took a while for things to get moving but when it did, we were into some excellent bream fishing. I'm not quite sure how many we landed-possibly 40 odd, and we had some really good sized fish among them .Plenty in the two pound bracket and topped by a 'three' for Andy, all on squid baits.
The bream seemed to dominate the show and, apart from a couple of pout and dogs to Andy, a dog and a garfish for me, no other species showed up.The wind backed right off and it got very warm in the middle of the day but it wouldn't last.
As the tide turned we decided on a move but not before we had a difficult time retrieving the grapnel. The boat wouldn't shift it and eventually we both had to haul it up by hand.It had become snagged in , what looked like, an old gill net complete with a tangled mess of rope which weighed a ton.I did eventually manage to free it hanging precariously over the bow and the great 'lump' fell from sight , returning to the depths.
Our last mark was 'Phil's Skate Mark' and by then the wind had picked up to a Force 4, with white tops showing.I was a little apprehensive continually monitoring the wind's strength on my anemometer. The boat, however, took it all in it's stride and not once did we feel threatened. A few more bream showed Immediately and then, just by way of a change, I landed a nice little spotted ray to finish off the day.
We upped anchor, without a problem this time, at 1715 and bumped our way in at 9-10 knots with the cuddy fending off the worst of the spray.An exhilarating ride home but, It was a pleasant feeling to be motoring on the flat calm water once we'd finally reached the river mouth.
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