Small Boat Fishing - Lochaline Skate
A few years ago now, Dave Devine and I went up to Loch Sunart tucked into the northern corner o the Sound of Mull to explore the prospects of fishing in the loch from one of Andy Jackson’s 16 foot Orkney self drives. We had just anchored up in around 270 feet of water less than half a mile out into Laga Bay when Ian Burrett's 19 foot Strikeliner 'OnyerMarks' came heading our way. I recognised the boat instantly having enjoyed some brilliant tope fishing onboard on Ian's home patch of Luce Bay the previous summer. He stopped briefly for a chat then headed out towards the mouth of the loch and was gone. We finished up with amongst other things, two ton up common skate, the best going 145 pounds, which in a 16 foot Orkney Longliner powered by an 8 hp outboard isn't bad going at all. Chatting over the phone with Ian some days later I discovered that they had taken common’s up to 182 pounds in and around the Sunart area. Our paths then crossed again a couple of years on when I joined him and a party from Cheshire for another day's toping. Common skate inevitably came into the conversation, and Ian suggested I might like to join up with him at Lochaline the following spring which is the key time for numbers big female skate which average at around 150 pounds, and the smaller males which tend to come in at around a ton.
I had all but forgotten about that conversation until one evening the following March, when out of the blue I received a call from Ian. 'Still fancy a look at the skate fishing'?. Well who wouldn’t? So Ian suggested a few dates around the middle of April when a regular party from the Takeley SAC known as the 'Essex Boys' would be up there fishing with him. Four of them had chartered two boats for three days. Two to a boat would mean plenty of room to move about with the camera and hopefully to fish, besides which they were a good bunch of lads, and a set of jammy so and so’s when it came to catching big skate. What’s more, we could confidently fix the dates on the basis of the weather, even at that early stage, as it is always possible to put the boats over fish somewhere regardless of wind speed and direction. If conditions are good, it’s the Firth of Lorne. If they are less than good, then there are still plenty of fish much closer to Ian’s Lochaline base along the Sound of Mull. And if conditions turn really nasty, the boats can be trailered up and towed over to the sheltered waters of Loch Sunart which produced 'OnyerMarks' best skate so far.
As you will have gathered already, Ian Burrett is a charter boat operator, but one with a difference, as all his work is done from trailered Orkney Strikeliners allowing him the flexibility to pick and choose marks around his Mull of Galloway base according to the weather, and to go on trailaways such as to Lochaline each spring. The big skate trips started off as a few days for himself and a couple of friends and progressively developed to the point where both 'OnyerMarks' and one of Ian's other boats 'Go West' skippered by Spike Millington now set up camp at Lochaline for around four weeks each year, with full bookings every day. Space on the boats however is offered only to Luce Bay clients as a thank you for their support over the year. That’s a mark of how much it has grown. What’s more, the fishing can sustain it. This is one area where common skate actually live up to their name. Careful gaffing, size estimations based on a very accurate weight to dimensions chart, and a strict policy of catch and release have seen skate numbers increase over recent time. So much so that tagged fish are commonly re-caught without any signs of physical damage caused either by being gaffed or their up and down journey through 350 to 550 feet of water.
The plan was for myself and Dave Devine to join the two crews. On day the weather was so calm that we headed straight down to the Firth of Lorne some 14 miles sailing distance from base. In the preceding few days, conditions had kept the boats much closer to Lochaline, and while the marks there had produced 19 fish to 182 pounds, the bigger tides which are favoured along the Sound of Mull had by that time eased away. That, coupled to the proven productivity of the Firth of Lorne, would make the longer journey worth while. So at the appointed spot, the anchor went down in 428 feet of water, followed by big whole coalfish baits with their tails removed to prevent spinning in the tide nicked onto forged 12/0 O’Shaughnessy hooks. The rest of the trace comprised of a good 7 feet of 200 lbs mono and a suitably sized swivel. It is crucial to make the heavy mono trace longer than the maximum potential length of the fish measured from nose tip to the end of its tail. Any shorter and you run the risk of thorns along the edges of the tail doing damage to the main line, with disastrous consequences as I was to find out. A 12 inch tubi-boom helps prevent the heavy mono and the main line coming into contact and tangling on the drop when there isn’t much tide to straighten the trace. The rest of the gear needs to be 50 pound class hand tackle, with the reel loaded to capacity with 50 to 70 pounds breaking strain braid.
No skipper should or probably would offer any sort of guarantee of a good catch. Fish can be particularly un-predictable animals at times, and will quite happily fly in the face of what is expected of them. This said, Ian was oozing confidence. With the tide due to start dying nicely by mid morning, he confidently predicted that we would catch 2 fish before the run picked up again, the first of which would be hooked up at 10.45, followed a further 3 later in the day when the run again began to ease away again. Whether we would convert those opportunities into fish on the deck of the boat was out of his hands. He can only provide the opportunities. But he got it wrong. The first take came at 10.40, a full 5 minutes early. A frustrating half hearted take which left Paul Maris a little unsure as to when he should tighten into the fish, and one which with hindsight needed more time than it was given as it was missed on the strike. Ten minutes later, a more positive run resulted in Dave Hawkeswood sticking the hook into the first fish of the day. When it came into the boat for measuring, its dimensions put it at 60 pounds, the smallest fish of the year. But you wouldn’t have thought so in the early stages of the encounter. Still needing to be prised from the bottom and worked the 430 or so feet to the boat, a ‘mere’ 60 pounder is still no push over.
Other runs for various reasons were not converted into fish. One however which was turned out to be the best fish of the year so far. After a gruelling, and at times dis-heartening struggle to break the fish’s bottom suction then win line, Paul Maris repeatedly had that line stolen back off the reel over the hour or so between connecting with the fish and getting it to the boat. This fish came out of the estimation formula at a staggering 191 pounds which was a personal best for Paul. At the same time, Spike and the other 'Essex Boys' aboard 'Go West' were also notching up a few successes. Just to demonstrate that common skate really aren’t all that fussed about being hooked, dragged up through a range of pressure changes we can’t even begin to imagine, gaffed, hauled into a boat for a few minutes then released, the pair aboard 'Go West' boated the same 105 pound fish twice within the space of an hour. While all of this was going on, anchored on the inside of us, two of Ian’s ex-regulars Malcolm Scarlet and his mate Trevor who had trailed their Warrior 165 up from somewhere in Geordieland to join the party, had been doing battle with the same fish for over 2 hours without getting it clear of the bottom before loosing it. Shortly after, Dave Hawkeswood brought a 105 pounder to the boat to complete the morning’s business which was one more fish than Ian had predicted.
As anticipated, a fairly quite spell followed as the tide picked up. A time to keep on fishing though as skate can show at any time. But also a time to put a few smaller baits down to try and hook up some of the spurdogs that had made such a mess of the skate baits earlier. Apparently, if there is one thing spurdogs do not like it is the cut up carcass of one of their own dropped back into their midst. So half a spurdog was sent down on my line to join the two coalfish baits already down there. It wasn’t long after that the tide started to ease and we were due 3 more skate if Ian’s predictions were to be realised. What nobody expected was hooking them all up at the same time. Three very big fish on a triple hit takes some concentration if tangles are to be avoided as each takes off in a different direction. Ian took charge of organising which rods had to be passed under or over the rest. But it wasn’t line tangles that led to the fish losses here. Mine was the first to go having caught the braid with the sharp spines on its tail. Next to be lost was Paul’s. What exactly happened there is unclear as the hook came back complete with its bait. Only Dave managed to see the battle through with a PB at 184 pounds testing his recent heart triple by-pass operation to the max. 'Go West' also had a fish of similar size and dropped another biggie off in full view of everybody as the hook pulled literally at the surface.
The following morning dawned a very different day. Wind and rain were forecast with increasing amounts of both as the day progressed. Ian particularly wanted to get back into the First of Lorne, if only for the morning slack water. Spike and Malcolm Scarlet decided to settle up over one of the more sheltered marks closer to base that had been productive on the bigger tides earlier in the week. We pushed on around the corner. Conditions were not that bad when the anchor went down. Unfortunately, after around an hour and one missed take the anchor pulled. So rather that re-set it for a short stay which can take an age at that depth, we decided to join the others a little earlier than planned. By all accounts we had missed nothing with our abortive venture. At our new mark the water was around 70 feet shallower, but the tide was much more ferocious demanding more lead to hold bottom, and more strength to get fish up to the boat. This time, while Ian was still predicting certain success, he would not be drawn on numbers, though he was quite specific about the timing. 'The early flood is when this mark fishes best'. It seems that bait movement as the boat starts to swing on the rope as it takes up its new line of lie in the tide is what turns these skate on. The only drawback was that it is quite a bouldery area where hang-ups are going to occur. When they do, 200 pound mono and 70 pound braid can take some breaking out.
Malcolm and Trevor aboard 'Red Gill' were the first to see action taking a couple of males around the 100 pound mark. Male skate don’t grow nearly as big as females, though to compensate they fight twice as hard for their size. Spikes crew aboard 'Go West' managed to find one of the bigger females with dimensions equating to 184 pounds. At the same time, Dave Hawkeswood added another three figure male to our tally. Meanwhile, 'Red Gill' had made a short move up tide of the other boats and had picked up another three males for their efforts. After a couple more takes which came to nothing, Dave Hawkeswood hit onto a decent fish. Ian, Paul and I stood watching when a sudden scream of the ratchet came from my outfit which had been pushed out of the way up against the cuddy. As I tightened up the line, I was also in to a decent fish. And this time they both stayed on. After maybe half an hour I finally managed to get my fish moving. Dave on the other hand was having more of a problem breaking the bottom suction with his fish, which was understandable as it turned out to be quite a bit bigger than mine. Both fish were males and both had tags providing even more evidence of how well common skate respond to careful gaffing and catch and release.
As big skate fishing trips go, that weekend was a good one. But it positively pales into insignificance compared to what was to come two years on. I've kept on going up each spring to fish with Ian, and so too have the 'Essex Boys'. Sometimes I jump in with Paul and Dave, and on other occasions we have trailed our Warrior 165 up and have always come away with fish. Our most recent trip in 2007 produced three fish in a single morning for a combined weight of 574 pounds, two of them going over the 200 pound barrier. But even that doesn't hold a candle to the last trip I had in the company of Paul and Dave. This was the 2006 trip which was kicked off with the presentation of a purpose built Penn skate rod to Paul Maris inscribed with the words 'Golden Ball'. And boy did he live up to his name. After taking a fish of 202 pounds on camera, Dave Hawkeswood was called home early leaving Paul with the boat to himself. Not one to squander the opportunity, he went on to boat fish of 157, 174, 180, 186, 193, two at 199, 204 and 214 pounds giving him a nine fish average of almost 190 pounds. On one day alone he was bent into skate for a total of 4½ hours solid. Then, as I was driving home, he bagged himself another PB of 219 pounds. How do you better that. Well if its possible, 'Golden Balls' will surely find a way.
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