2012 review

Its been a bloody awful year for weather. think that's the thing everyone will remember about 2012 when all the memories of summer sports events dies away.

To be honest my enthusiasm for my lifelong passion has been severely tested this year and with fishing in general becoming harder and harder some of the joy has gone. however i can think of a couple of occasions this year when i remembered what i see in it and why i enjoy it. Nothing better than a nice calm, sunny, warm day afloat and at the same time getting your string pulled on a frequent basis. Add to that time away from work spent with family and friends then its a very good reason to go. Back to my opening those days have been hard to find.

the winter started normally, cold with periods of snow. Kind of what we expect in Winter!

After a warm weather cruise we managed a couple of trips up north to see one relatively successful trip and the other was well the opposite.
Next up was a trip North but this time to the East coast for some shore sport this time we had a relatively successful trip but couldn't find a lunker to add to a combined bag of some 16 fish between 2-5lbs. this was to prove our one and only venture this way as again the weather gods conspired to be calm the weekends we could manage and howl a gale the ones we couldn't.

Spring saw the weather turn very freaky with hot and sunny in March and the start of April! very unusual normally summer comes for 2-3 weeks in May.

However we did slot in 2 trips for skate and both were highly successful with Alan and i bagging a total of 6 fish all bar 1 over 150lbs with Alan once again adding to the growing tally of 199lb fish he has captured over the years. Is it just me but we must have a different tape measure to most as he cannot break that barrier so easily passed by some others!

during the period where the weather gods smiled upon us we had some nice pollack fishing added to a couple of relatively successful trips to the SW where we found several early season tope. things at this stage were starting to look good fishing and weather wise.

By now the weather had changed and we were chasing good days which were few and far between especially at the weekends. Even the change of tactics and taking week days into consideration could n't help matters all that much. pick a wednesday and it would be good tuesday get the pattern. however we did get a couple of days and the fishing was reasonable without really being red hot, bit of that is setting the bar far too high at times after past adventures. However a couple of highlights were a shoal of bream so Alan could pop his cherry well and truly, a mark where Huss came thick and fast for a couple of hours and a new tope mark which proved very fruitful one afternoon. we never got back to any of these marks after the initial visit as they are all exposed and the weather dictated a no return for the rest of the summer.

 

 

By now we were well into the summer months and i was desperate to get Shetland ticked off my to do list but again a familiar theme and the weather decided it would take 2 attempts however it was well worth the effort for once and was probably the angling highlight of the year. Not often you can get cheesed off catching double figured fish 2 at a time especially cod. Shetland is the place. For now! Hope it lasts...

 After this my angling has been extremely limited and i have blogged the trips since.
What with the weather, builders crawling over the house for weeks and weeks, work we decided a 2nd Cruise holiday was in order and what a great 2 weeks we had, cor it was that good we saw 'Mr Blue Sky' and it was tee shirt weather at the same time. visited some nice spots all round the Med and even got to cycle around Palma to get our cycling fix in, how good is a cruise? still managed cycling, gym work added to a block spin class session and still put on a stone in weight. the food is to die for, heart attack i would guess.... 

 

starting up

This seems like months ago now but this was one of the last times out. just amazing how quickly the weeks roll into months.

Went with Alan for a trip out on the West coast of Gigha to find a few pollack which were a bit on the slow side to appear. Eventually we found a decent spot with a good number of quality fish in the 6-8lb range.

However things started to slow and we just thought we had worked our way through the local stock when i was bringing a smaller fish to the surface which i thought had fought particularily well, turns out it was not only fighting me but the dark shape behind it. when i slowed the wind down the dark shape had a bite! It turned and went.
Soon enough the heavy rig was on and the remains of the bitten fish were mounted in a 8/0 hook.
nothing happened so we had another drift over the same area and were just about to give up when off went the ratchet. Bingo! The fight was absolutely brilliant as there was no weight or float in the way as i had free lined the bait. the result, the top picture.
After that we went looking for mackerel rather unsuccesfully and ended up back fishing for pollack in another area. Ended up a nice surprise between the pollack which were unusally patchy.
Mind you you can see their point with these things lurking around chomping bits out of them.

the next trip was a West coast conger hunt that went fairly well with the best eel tipping the scales round to 27lbs. We had approx half a dozen eels over 20lbs so will have another bash next year when the weather is warm wet.

The last 2 months has seen me retire the fishing rods and concentrate on my cycling addiction however it turns out that's not a whole load of fun in the cold and rain either.