Species Hunt: Loch Etive
One of my favourite aspects of our recent fishing sessions is the sheer variety of locations and species that we’ve had the pleasure of visiting and targeting. We had just spent 24 hours on a small Carp water and less than 24 hours later we were watching our spools empty as our baits plummeted 300 feet into the depths as we spent a day afloat, surrounded
by the wilderness of north west Argyll.
We had ear marked a few species to target in the short 8 hours we had on the water, most of which we thought wouldn’t be too much of a problem and within the first 20 minutes at our first mark we had been acquainted with the first, a nice Loch Etive Thornback Ray, shortly followed by some small Whiting.
A slight change of hook size and bait was required to tempt the third. A small Grey Gurnard couldn’t resist a small strip of squid and with only an hour gone we had 3 of our 5 target species.
A move of a mile or so up the loch saw us anchored off a ridge and fishing in around 100 feet and again it wasn’t long until the first fish of the mark was on board. A couple of Lesser Spotted Dogfish, a species not on our shortlist but welcome all the same, and another Ray came in quick succession before finally another favourite of Etive made an appearance.
After a few modest Spurdogs, species 4 of our main targets, we made another move intodeep water in the hope of our 5th and final target. We had set out earlier with the thought of a Ling, a fish I have yet to catch and after speaking with Doug Bannatyne at TFC Boats we had an idea of where to find one.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be and all that was taken from this mark was a single Whiting. Retrieving 8 ounces of lead from almost 300 feet is a lot of work for such a small fish. However the mark does fit the bill for a big Ling and will be one to receive further attention on our next visit.
With time quickly running out and a distinct presence of desperation to finish on some fish, an air of uncertainty and frequent, brief and uninformed moves resulted in little effective fishing time and the last hour or so fizzled out with little more than a few more small whiting. A slightly disappointing end to a session that started so promising.
However, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and the move to find a Ling could easily have proven worthwhile; although hindsight showed that perhaps we should have just stayed on the fish when we found them. All being said, a quick skip through our photos once ashore,
reflected quite a successful and thoroughly enjoyable day and one sure to be repeated soon.
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