Scottish Adventures with Schogsky and Hutch : Part 4 - The MOG boat trip

After having a few pints the night before at the Clashwannan, I woke up feeling a wee bit sluggish. Ever ready for another days fishing though and with it being the morning of the boat trip, I  perked up fairly quickly and started sorting the gear out with Jake and Scott. All sorted we loaded the car and left to meet with our skipper Spike at Portlogan harbour. Greetings out of the way it was launch time and we soon found ourselves steaming out to a mark to do a spot of pollack fishing. Spike was recommending macky fished under a float but as everyone knows, we are lure fisherman, so at first this was not a viable option lol. Instead, armed with a number of SP's we began working the area hopeful of a few fish. Sure enough it wasn't long before we all started getting a bit of action, with Jake getting the majority of the fish on either his arkansas shiner sluggos or his new found love, the ribsters :) Me and Scott were getting fish as well though to a number of other lures which included red gills.. Jake got the pick of the bunch though with a lovely pollock of over 6lb, which unfortunately after a bit of confusion with the skipper, was thrown back before we could get any decent photos. I decided on a change of tactic after a period of drought on the SP's and decided to drop down a set of sabikis tipped with Power Isome. To say it was slow would be an understatement but I did manage a couple more pollock and my first new species of the trip, a cuckoo wrasse ( species 51) before turning to bait to catch a few more fish. After catching a few more cuckoo's myself, Scott decided to give the rag a try as well and this soon resulted in his first cuckoo of the year. Scott also added a coalie to

the days species tally shortly after and I added a ballan also. We then had a very quick few drifts for macky before again steaming off to another mark in hope of something a little different. The skipper had decided to take us to an area of sandy bottom where he thought we'd have a decent chance of picking up some flatties along with a selection of gurnards and any other predominantly sand based species. Again we chose to fish artificials over bait tipping sabikis with Isome. Jake was first in on the opening drift with this grey gurnard, another species to add to his list for the year.Scott followed suit bagging himself his own grey gurnard on the same drift whilst I was left to watch on. After a couple more drifts and just a single pollack landed we moved out to deeper

water where the plan was to target a tope. Spike dropped anchor over one of his hopeful marks and we were all baiting up with half a mackerel whilst the skipper sorted some shurvy. Chucked out and left, the three of us dropped down with an assortment of unbaited feathers to see what was around. After hitting mackerel on the way down for a few drops we all eventually managed to get the rigs down to the sea bed. Jigging the sabikis/hokkais over the seabed was again slow but after a 10 minute lull I finally managed to start getting into a few fish. First off I levelled the scores by getting my first lure caught grey gurnard of the trip before managing to add my 2nd new species to my yearly tally in the form of a red gurnard ( species 52..also lure caught) Scott saw that I was having some success so

lending him my rod for a while I watched on as he tried to get something fr himself. Sure enough a bite did come and as it came up to the boat we both saw it was a whiting which would have been a new one for Scott. Unfortunately though as he was lifting it up from the water it threw the hook leaving us to watch it swim back down to the depths. Then a bit of excitement as my tope bait was picked up, but after an initial short run the fish never came back which was rather disappointing :( Anyway, after that Scott handed back my rod and I dropped down a couple more times to see if I could get anything else. I wasn't disappointed either as after a 10 minute wait I got another bite which resulted in a whiting (another one for the TLF species hunt). It was now time to move on as the tope baits were sitting untouched for long periods. The area we were heading to now was an area of broken ground in which we had been told we had a good chance of codling, haddock and a variety of other species. At this point in the day none of us were any longer fussed about catching on lure only so we decided to bait our hokkais with strips of

 macky and see what we could bring up. The first drop saw me and Jake get a double hook up of haddock, my first ever ever and my 3rd new species of the trip to boot (species 53). This area was proving to be a little more productive than where we

 had previously been and we were soon all landing a good number of fish. Scott managed a double of new species for himself when he landed a whiting and dogfish whilst myslef and Jake also had a few more doggies and a pollock. It was now nearing the end and so the skipper called last drift. Not expecting an awful lot down went our baited rigs and in came another doggie for Scott before I had a nice smash on my plugging rod. This felt a little better and after a spirited fight up came the only Codling of the trip at maybe 2lb, great fun. I wasn't to fussed about a photo as I was confident of bigger before the end of the year. Fingers crossed that won't come back to haunt me.

  So that was it then, the end of a cracking day out. Between us we managed a very respectable 11 species which included new lure caught species for all of us as an added bonus. Thanks to Spike for a great day out and of course it wouldn't have been anywhere near as enjoyable without the banter from Scott and Jake so thanks again fellas.

Hope you enjoyed reading,
Tight Lines,
Ross