Happy return
BY LOUIS FEROX I GOT a bit of a nostalgia trip this week – a journey up north to bag the first Munros of 2020 meant I was travelling along the north-east coast for a spot of sightseeing.
The plan was to grab a couple of hours on the flood tide targeting wrasse or mackerel somewhere while my better half read her book in the sunshine.
A late breakfast and lazy strolls put me a couple of hours into the ebb by the time I landed at Portsoy harbour, two decades or more after I last fished there with my wee Woolworths boxed telescopic kit.
I’ve got an awful lot more casts under my belt now. Back then, I barely knew the names of the fish I was struggling to catch.
I depended on the beginners guide book I’d read in the tent, and the charitable reaction from my folks when I did manage to land something, to keep me going.
The harbour has a natural channel with an easily accessed rocky point.
Ideally, I’d have been fishing over the kelp with soft plastics. But the turn of the tide made it more difficult to avoid snags and fish effectively, so I was targeting the shelf edge using a float and sliding stop knot.
Float fishing close to rocks or a pier wall with access to deep water can be very effective as fish will naturally come close to structures to look for food.
There’s not usually a need for big casts – often fishing right against the structure produces the best result.
A quick bit of plumbing to get an idea of depth meant I was able to switch up from midwater to near the bottom.
It’s a lot more of an inexact science than coarse fishing but I like a good idea of where the bottom is.
Fish like pollock, whiting and mackerel all tend to hunt at roughly the same depth (halfway up), while wrasse will generally be closer to the bottom 10 to 20ft, so it pays to vary the depth while letting the tide work your bait invitingly as the float bobs along.
After changing depth and switching baits, the float rocketed under and disappeared in a flash.
A little mackerel strip fished about 15ft down had been nailed hard and I set hook with a sweep of the rod and a quick few turns on the reel handle.
The fish worked hard to get free – it even took line and repeatedly darted around and crash-dived for the bottom.
A determined pollock that I’d have certainly taken proudly home for dinner back in the day was quickly unhooked and released.
I might know the names better now, and certainly have more appropriate gear, but even if it’s only an hour on the rocks, the feeling of being happy to just be fishing is still the same.